\i    PR 

5496 
(       B7 
1895 

MAIN 


)BERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON 
)TUDY  BY  A:  B:  WITH  A  PRE- 
JDE  £r  A  POSTLUDE  BY  L:  I:  G. 


BOSTON 
MDCCCXCV 


1^^ 


^^cx.^ 


ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON 
A  STUDY  BYABWITH  APRE- 
LUDE<2r'A  POSTLUDE  BY  L I G 


(=^?— li 


lL£f==^ 


SICVTLILIVM 
INTER  5PINA5 


BOS 

Issued  for  pri 

COPELANR 

MDC 


TON 

vate  distribution 

AND  DAY 
[cxcv 


p-^ 


TO 
WILLIAM    ERNEST    HENLEY 


Sy 


'And  whensoever  thou  it  uppe  dost  take. 
Doe   pluck  it  softlie,   for  that  Shepheard's  sake." 


MM66r? 


^      A  VALEDICTION     ^ 

AYS  are  drooping,  thought  is  dumb. 
Crept  into  a  cave; 
Winter  terrors  thickly  come 
On  the  haunted  wave: 
Light  and  delight  have  left 
What  in  their  stead. 
Since  the  nations  kneel-  about  the  bravely  fallen  head? 

Black  the  deadly  clouds  o'errush 
All  our  heaven  in  him. 
Powder  in  many  a  boreal  flush. 
Play  of  starry  w^liim. 
Ere  the  king  reed  is  cut. 
Ere  the  full  strain, 
Lo,  the  fickle  faun  is  gone;  the  woods  are  bare  again. 

Who  her  truant  to  the  North 
Chiding,  can  restore  ? 
Which  of  cities,  leaning  forth. 
Touch  him  as  before  ? 
Where  serried  Cant  efFrays 
Art,  as  of  old. 
Nevermore  aloft  that  loved  oriflamme  of  gold. 

Would  that  he  might  yet  delay 
While  the  onset  lowers. 
Would  he  had  not  borne  away 
Ardor  his  and  ours! 
O  song  upon  the  march 
Elsewhither  blown! 
The  battle-dread  is  on  us  now,  riding  afield  alone. 


Though  in  sorrow  and  unrest, 
Scotland  searching  free 
Find  no  steward  of  the  Best 
Bountiful  as  he. 
Nor  arms  of  Scottish  dead 
Fold  him,  exiled. 
With  the  wilder,  gentler,  he  so  gentle  and  so  wild; 

And  asunder  from  his  own 
Though  Samoa  keep 
Him  uplifted  to  her  throne 
Of  pellucid  sleep. 
Winds  that  across  the  world 
Ride  the  sea-swell, 
Sign  him  with  the  tears  of  home,  the  chrism  of  farewell. 

Was  it  menace  from  the  dark. 
Was  it  body's  fret. 
Early  taught  a  patient  barque 
Cruises  sadder  yet  ? 
Or  but  some  primal  urge 
Greatly  obeyed. 
Drew  to  the  unfriended  hearts  the  heart  of  mercy  made? 

Where  from  water's  blue  outpost 
Lonely  Beauty  calls. 
Calls,  and  down  the  glowing  coast 
Felt  denial  falls; 
Where  tern  above  the  cloud 
Trooping,  have  heard 
From  the  Prince  of  Welcomes  by,  no  glad  saluting  word; 

Where  the  slanted  glens  unbar 

Boldly  to  the  gale. 

And  aromas,  loosed  afar. 

Kiss  the  trader's  sail; 

Where  over  lava-fire 

Dances  the  vine. 
For  a  symbol  perfected,  thy  sepulchre  and  shrine  ! 
6 


Memory  like  a  rainbow  stair 
Painted  on  the  morn. 
Dearest  name  that  on  a  prayer 
Christianly  is  borne. 
Soon  to  romance  exhaled. 
Linger  and  live: 
Meed  no  purer  unto  man  the  childlike  men  can  give. 

Still  the  islands  good  to  seek 
Rule  in  wonted  mode; 
Vaea's  bright  surf-belted  peak 
Still  be  thine  abode! 
Grief  of  her  loyal  race 
Time  shall  retrieve. 
And  all  in  airy  legendry  thy  shining  spirit  weave. 

To  the  bathers'  wonder,  oft 
As  the  night  is  nigh. 
And  to  babes  beneath  the  soft 
Wings  of  lullaby, 
(While  we  of  dull  unfaith. 
Thrall  to  our  sighs. 
Dual  dream  to  quicken  thee  and  us  may  not  devise). 

There  on  summer's  holy  hills 
In  illumined  calms. 
Smile  of  Tusitala  thrills 
Thro*  a  thousand  palms; 
There  in  a  rapture  breaks 
Dawn  on  the  seas. 
When  Tusitala  from  his  shoon  unbinds  the  Pleiades. 


A  STUDY 

HEN  one  who  has  lived  among  us  goes  voyaging,  leav- 
ing us  to  the  impoverished  solitude  of  a  darker  night, 
a  cloudier  day,  we  can  but  set  in  order  the  poor  lend- 
ings  he  has  cast  aside.  He  may  have  gone  to  sail  a 
wider  sea,  with  promise  of  return;  and  then  we  solace 
the  failing  heart  with  hope.  Or,  as  it  happens  hourly  on  this  in- 
secure island  whence  many  are  rescued,  in  strange  haste,  by  ships 


that  touch  before  we  hail  them,  and  are  gone,  he  may  have  been 
snatched  forever  from  the  circled  rock  where  he  had  made  what 
shift  he  might  to  build  himself  a  house,  and  stint  his  hunger  on  the 
wilding  root.  Then  it  is  that  we  fold  the  poor  husks  of  his 
habiting  with  solemn  care,  and  a  yearning  sense  of  love  unspent. 
This  was  his  book,  and  this  the  flower  he  tended;  here  stays  his 
glove,  still  rounded  to  the  wrist  and  palm.  Strange  it  should 
yield  the  grasp  no  warming  thrill!  Poor  trifles  these,  until  he 
made  them  into  monuments  of  grief;  small,  sacred  relics,  to  be 
touched  only  by  his  dearest,  and  held  for  them  henceforward  in 
some  casket,  transfigured  by  their  presence  to  a  shrine.  Thus 
it  is  in  the  inner  orbit  when  love  parts  from  love;  but  if  the  man 
has  lived  an  artist,  a  true  maker,  then  are  we  all  heirs  of  the  body 
of  his  thought.  We  have  each  the  sacred  right  to  muse  and 
brood  over  our  sad  possession,  finding  it,  whatever  its  magnifi- 
cence, all  too  poor  to  echo  what  is  gone.  Yesterday  Stevenson 
was  ours;  to-day  the  too-secure  present  has  rebuked  itself  in 
solemn  denial,  and,  in  the  noble  phrasing  of  an  elder  speech: 
He  is  not. 

Yesterday  it  was  a  commonplace  of  criticism  to  name  him  the 
greatest  living  master  of  English  style,  sharing  the  unvexed  throne 
with  Ruskin  only.  To-day  has  brought  the  hour  for  pondering 
over  our  treasures,  and  bethinking  ourselves  wherein  their  beauty 
lay,  that  thereby  our  gratitude  and  worship  may  increase.  We 
cannot  go  too  far;  such  keen  espial  will  only  point  the  way  by 
beauty  led,  and  unveil  plenitude  of  fair  device. 

We  know  his  life  in  part,  its  outer  form  and  circumstance. 
Smilingly  reminiscent,  he  gave  us,  briefly  but  generously,  a 
biography  of  the  only  sort  that  really  concerns  us;  such  as  touched 
upon  his  work  and  the  creed  to  which  he  set  his  days.  He  was 
inevitably  confidential,  personal,  intimate;  life  was  so  bewilder- 
ing, so  rich!  How  should  he,  a  curious  child,  standing  with  eye 
to  crevice,  fail  to  call  out,  in  wonder  and  delight:  "I  see!  I 
hear!  O  listen,  look  with  me!"  So  much  he  gave  us,  of  his  own 
good-will,  and  we  claim  no  right  to  more.  If  the  friend  o{  his 
heart,  or  those  leal  comrades  to  whom  his  soul  spoke  with  up- 
lifted visor,  unravel  some  of  his  mystery,  we  are  rich  indeed; 
but  failing  that,  such  as  we  saw  him  *Mn  his  habit  as  he  lived," 
what  was  he .?  Earliest  of  all,  a  child  comp'act  of  strange  differ- 
ences, so  cunningly  woven  that  the  world  appealed  to  him  on  a 
hundred  sides,  and  yet  could  not  o'erthrow  him.  The  channels 
running  toward  that  quickening  soul  were  many  and  free;  they 
8 


brought  innumerable  vivifying  influences  to  w^hich  lesser  men  are 
strangers;  they  were  the  avenues  of  innumerable  sickening  fears. 
For  though  Nature  play  the  fairy,  loving  and  lavish  in  gifts,  she 
keeps  the  sphynxlike  impartiality  of  her  common  mien.  She 
denies  no  effect,  be  the  cause  legitimate.  If  the  key  fit  the  lock, 
the  door  opens,  though  to  Death  himself;  and  when  she  fashions 
a  soul  so  sensitive  that  the  winds  of  heaven  evoke  from  it  a  happy 
harmony,  she  does  not  deny  it  the  shrieking  discord  of  **  blasts 
from  hell."  Yet  the  child  must  have  had  an  unwonted  balance 
of  will  and  temperance  of  judgment,  since  the  conflicting  strains 
of  his  nature  wove  themselves  into  a  texture  so  fine  and  warm. 
For  his  ethic  bent,  he  looks  shrewdly  back  to  his  grandfather, 
the  old  divine.  **  Even  as  I  write  the  phrase,  he  moves  in  my 
blood,  and  whispers  words  to  me,  and  sits  efficient  in  the  very 
knot  and  centre  of  my  being."  As  that  gentle  scholar  walked 
the  eighteenth  century, — strange,  bewildering  thought!  some 
part  of  Robert  Louis  to-be,  walked  with  him,  and  nestled  in  his 
heart;  and  in  Robert  Louis,  the  writer,  the  old  divine  still 
acted  after  his  mortal  part  had  long  been  dust. 

From  Thomas  Stevenson,  his  father,  the  child  undoubtedly 
drew  a  royal  disregard  of  the  practical  difficulties  of  life;  he 
breathed  the  spirit  of  one  who  battles  with  the  sea.  This 
Thomas  Stevenson  was  also,  though  in  less  measure  than  his 
radiant  son,  compact  of  opposites.  The  sternness  arid  mel- 
ancholy of  the  north  lived  in  him,  not  quite  at  peace  with  the 
vivacity  of  the  south;  **  shrewd  and  childish,  passionately  at- 
tached, passionately  prejudiced,  a  man  of  many  extremes,  many 
faults  of  temper,  and  no  very  stable  foothold  for  himself  among 
life's  troubles,"  a  generous  citizen,  and  a  fastidious  lover  of 
fitting  words.  He  was  one  in  a  close-knit  line  of  beacon- 
builders,  and  it  would  be  strange  if  hereditary  virtue  were  not 
engendered  by  such  unbroken  warfare  against  wind  and  wave. 
Men  of  other  homely  occupations  helped  to  found  this  princely 
lineage,  and  it  was  possibly  theirs  to  generate  in  the  child  his  love 
and  understanding  of  the  honest  tasking  that  lies  near  the  earth. 
Still  more  remote  (but  many  a  league  removed  from  that  oldest 
ancestor  of  all.  Probably  Arboreal,  on  whom  he  casts  a  whimsy 
look),  it  is  inevitable  to  conclude  that  some  gypsy  strain  sent 
down  to  him  its  craving  for  the  wild  and  free.  But  this  of  his 
inheritance  only  so  far  as  it  affected  his  work;  of  the  man  him- 
self, known  in  a  measure  through  his  books,  something  later. 
(And  with  him,  as  with  all,  patently  as  dew  is  water,  the  style 
is  the  man.)  9 


The  boy  Louis  was  a  dreamer,  the  lord  and  subject  of  good, 
heady  dreams,  colored  brighter  than  the  darling  prints  of  that 
early  playtime,  gayer  than  mortal  '^crimson  lake  (hark  to  the 
sound  of  it  —  crimson  lake!  —  the  horns  of  elf-land  are  not  richer 
on  the  ear)  —  with  crimson  lake  and  Prussian  blue  and  a  certain 
purple.  .  .  .  Titian  could  not  equal."  There  were  dreams  to 
sell,  in  those  days;  and  in  that  market,  little  Louis  bought  **  two- 
pence colored"  every  time.  No  more  fascinating  self-betrayal 
shall  be  found,  though  you  seek  it  in  all  literature,  than  his 
Chapter  on  Dreams;  not  so  much  for  the  worth  of  knowing  how 
Doctor  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde  were  born  from  nightmare  chaos 
and  Olaila's  hideous  destiny  took  form  in  sleep,  as  that  it  lights  up 
the  very  tissue  of  that  throbbing  brain,  flamingly  alive  in  boy 
and  man.  At  first  and  often,  the  dreams  were  like  pure  sensa- 
tion, simple  as  a  line  upon  a  slate:  "a  certain  hue  of  brown," 
of  which  the  child  had  inconceivable  horror  and  loathing  at 
night,  though  none  whatever  by  day,  or  a  personal  torture 
wrought  from  the  two  traceable  experiences  of  urgent  school 
tasks  and  the  dread  of  death  and  judgment.  But  these  tricksy 
phantoms  of  the  night  soon  became  embodied;  they  lived,  and  put 
their  feet  to  action.  His  setting  forth  to  sleep,  like  that  of  his 
father,  was  to  the  accompaniment  of  imagined  stories,  straight- 
way to  be  acted  on  the  stage  of  dreams  by  his  little  people, 
his  Brownies.  Vividly  active  sprites,  they  were  the  mimes 
and  jesters  of  his  nightly  court;  but  all  the  pretty  poetry  of  their 
existence  sank  into  prose  when  their  master  and  task-fellow  be- 
gan to  spin  webs  for  the  public  eye.  Thenceforth  they  ran  in 
harness,  and  knew  the  road  to  market.  Every  hint  of  their 
blazonry  speaks  such  a  continuous  pageant  of  mental  joy  and  ac- 
tion as  makes  our  richest  day  seem  poor.  Scotland's  skies  are 
gray,  but  the  warm  little  theatre  of  one  boy's  brain  glowed 
brighter  than  her  heather;  here  were  glancing  swords,  and  beat- 
ing hoofs,  and  here  heroic  action  of  the  wars.  He  put  a  girdle 
round  the  earth;  he  lived  in  Spain. 

Poor  mortals,  most  of  us  trail  through  fagging  hours,  and  then 
lie  down  to  dullard  lethargy,  or  formless,  uncouth  visions  at  the 
best ;  here  was  a  creature  divinely  endowed  to  sap  the  very  veins 
of  life  all  day,  and  view  her  mimic  counterpart  by  night,  not 
untired,  it  is  true,  but  tossed,  like  Fortune's  shuttlecock,  from 
peak  to  peak.  Unripe,  as  yet,  for  dull  academies,  he  was  the 
pupil  of  sense ;  before  he  could  be  taught  to  know.  Nature,  the 
handmaid  of  God,  fed  his  hungry  capacity,  and  made  him  feel. 


And  so  was  the  growing  soul  inured  to  its  great  and  unsuspected 
destiny. 

The  outer  facts  of  his  life  are  prettily  diverse  and  briefly  told. 
Suffice  it  to  know  that  he  was  born,  a  Scot,  in  1850,  and  that 
he  loafed  and  lived  at  the  University  of  Edinburgh  ;  that  he  was 
predestined  to  engineering,  and  when  he  elected  to  follow  the 
profession  of  letters,  was  released  from  his  rougher  task  and 
pushed  into  the  law;  that,  **aye  writin',  aye  writin',"  he 
gently  and  insistently  refrained  from  practicing  this  imposed 
profession;  that  he  spent  years  in  search  of  a  sky  under  which 
he  might  barely  live,  and  that  he  died  at  Samoa,  in  an  enforced 
content,  a  ruler  of  hearts  among  the  island  people,  Tusitala,  the 
story-teller,  and  their  virtual  king.  The  rest,  or  its  alphabet, 
shall  be  read  backwards  from  the  mirror  of  his  work. 

No  autobiography  was  ever  more  quaintly  dressed  in  a  true 
simplicity  than  Robert  Louis  Stevenson's  confession  to  the  gaping 
public  of  the  method  whereby  he  learned  to  write  ;  a  straight- 
forward narrative,  quite  devoid  of  implication  that  his  anvil's  fire 
was  lighted  from  the  sun.  Ignore  with  him  his  nearness  to  the 
one  Source  of  spark  and  heat,  and  view  him  as  he  stands,  ham- 
mer in  hand,  strong  in  determination  to  become  a  cunning  arti- 
ficer of  words.  How  did  he  do  it  ?  So  far  as  the  tyro  reads, 
by  common  means  and  dull,  throwing  heavy  testimony  on  the 
side  of  the  ill-emphasized  platitude  that  genius  is  only  the 
capacity  for  taking  infinite  pains.  He  kept  pencil  and  paper  by 
him,  and  wrote  continuously,  seeking  form  and  form  only,  and 
serving  an  apprenticeship  vastly  like  his  own  presentment  of  the 
artist  life  at  Fontainebleau.  For  (as  he  says  of  the  young  fra- 
ternity who  herd  together  there,  spending  breathless  passion  on 
studies  destined  never  to  be  pictures)  to  the  crude  student,  form 
is  rightly  everything,  and  matter  merely  a  feather-weight.  He 
but  learns  to  use  his  tools,  scrupling  not  to  work  in  the  manner 
of  other  men,  and  making  palpable  imitation  the  basis  of  true 
art. 

What  student  among  the  few  who  have  bowed  their  backs  to 
toil,  has  had  Stevenson's  coolness  of  purpose,  his  acquiescence 
in  results  ?  For  though  the  ordinary  prentice  may  set  his  hand 
to  the  mastery  of  form,  knowing  his  own  crass  ignorance,  yet, 
with  the  fatuity  of  youth,  he  half  expects  to  find  the  outcome 
pregnant  of  wonder.  He  believes  much  in  the  divinity  of 
chance.  Surely  the  giant  oak  must  lie  in  seeds  engendered  by 
so  hot  a  sun  !      You  could  no  more  surprise  him  with  the  news 

II 


that  some  crude  page  of  his  had  set  the  world  a-praising  than  you 
could  kill  his  hope  by  crushing  it,  an  empty  husk.  And  all  the 
time  he  is  telling  himself  Keats  died  at  twenty-six,  and  maunder- 
ing over  Chatterton,  not  so  much  that  he  was  **  marvellous,'* 
but  marvellous  and  a  boy.  Stevenson  was  not  altogether  un- 
touched by  this  malady  of  youth,  this  green-sickness  of  author- 
ship; but  it  passed  him  lightly  by.  He  is  palpably  the  clearest- 
minded  of  men,  and  there  is  no  reason  for  doubting  either  his 
interpretation  or  his  memory  in  the  statement  that  he  deliberately 
sat  down  to  write  for  the  satisfaction  of  the  deed,  and  that,  when 
his  manuscript  was  refused  or  mercilessly  condemned,  he  ac- 
quiesced in  the  fiat  without  rancor  and  without  surprise.  For  a 
time,  he  was  merely  an  echo  of  the  fuller  voices,  the  trained, 
canorous  quiring  of  the  great.  In  the  school  of  art,  he  grew  up 
a  man  of  many  loves,  and  these  he  names  frankly,  v/ith  grateful 
homage,  content  to  acknowledge  their  influence  from  an  origi- 
nality so  vital  that  all  might  strengthen  it,  and  none  impair  it. 

That  he  should  so  unconcernedly  have  borne  testimony  to  this 
self-imposed  schooling  is  eminently  well  for  us  who  come  after 
him;  especially  for  those  who,  born  with  a  noteworthy  aptitude, 
are  misled  into  cruel  use  of  it  by  a  mistaken  idea  of  the  sanctity 
of  carelessness,  the  plenary  force  of  inspiration.  With  a  naive 
belief  in  the  sacredness  of  power,  such  fear  to  meddle  with  their 
trust,  as  they  were  the  children  of  Israel  and  their  treasure  the 
Tables  of  Stone.  But  this  man,  an  acknowledged  sovereign  over 
vast  accomplishment,  demonstrates,  in  his  own  proper  person, 
that  literature  is  an  art  to  be  learned;  and  that,  as  the  painter 
may  not  disdain  mastership  from  the  few  who  sit  in  state  within 
the  inner  chamber,  and  as  the  musician  finds  his  way  through 
pains  to  harmony,  so  the  man  of  letters  shall  by  no  means  ad- 
vance by  a  certain  divine  hit-or-miss  progress,  like  a  beetle  bung- 
ling toward  the  light. 

Perhaps  the  enormous  egotism  of  youth  infected  this  master 
workman  only  in  those  early  days  when,  a  prey  to  sickness  and  the 
thought  of  death,  he  wasted  the  hours  over  his  Voces  Fidelium 
with  a  yearning  desire  for  their  permanence  when  he  should  be 
no  more;  a  straining  belief  that  they  might  bear  testimony  for  him 
after  he  had  fallen  into  dust.  But  here,  also,  wise,  fostering 
chances  came  to  his  rescue,  and  restrained  him  to  healthier 
courses,  before  yet  he  saw  clearly  enough  to  exercise  a  free 
choice  and  save  himself.  It  is  curious  indeed  to  dream  on  the 
possible  career  of  one  so  starred  by  divers  gifts, —  child  of  the 


sun  and  yet  the  victim  of  earthly  languor  —  and  guess  what  he 
might  have  become  under  less  robust  conditions.  What  if  he  had 
drifted  into  the  student's  ways,  with  arduous  hours  in  libraries, 
under  the  spell  of  memory  and  the  past!  But  now  his  father's 
profession  claimed  him,  like  a  heartening  wind  over  great  stretches 
of  plain,  bringing  ever  the  salt  smack  of  the  health-renewing  sea. 
In  place  of  moping  over  Greek  roots,  or  galloping  with  English 
rhythm,  he  was  drinking  into  that  thirsty  mind  of  his  tales  of 
great  onslaughts  valiantly  withstood,  the  warfare  of  wave  on 
masonry,  perennial  strife  between  the  old,  old  craft  of  building 
and  the  force  of  tide  and  storm.  He  travelled  with  his 
father  from  point  to  point  along  the  coast;  he  met  the  wind 
face  to  face;  he  lingered  upon  docks,  and  his  heart  rose  to  the 
spreading  canvas,  and  tracked  the  beneficent  wonder-birds  of 
commerce,  until  they  dipped  below  the  horizon  and  were  lost  in 
dreams.  The  boy  must  have  done  a  deal  of  voyaging  then, 
almost  as  much  as  his  mind  effected  by  night.  Homekeeping 
was  not  for  him,  and  he  knew  it  early  and  followed  his  fancy 
late.  Here  lies  a  word  of  his  own  testimony,  vivid  and  con- 
clusive, filling  the  gap  of  supposition:  — 

"  It  [his  education  as  an  engineer]  takes  a  man  into  the  open 
air;  it  keeps  him  hanging  about  harbour-sides,  which  is  the 
richest  form  of  idling;  it  carries  him  to  wild  islands;  it  gives  him 
a  taste  of  the  genial  dangers  of  the  sea;  it  supplies  him  with  dex- 
terities to  exercise;  it  makes  demands  upon  his  ingenuity;  it  will 
go  far  to  cure  him  of  any  taste  (if  ever  he  had  one)  for  the 
miserable  life  of  cities.  And  when  it  has  done  so,  it  carries  him 
back  and  shuts  him  in  an  office!  From  the  roaring  skerry  and 
the  wet  thwart  of  the  tossing  boat,  he  passes  to  the  stool  and 
desk;  and  with  a  memory  full  of  ships,  and  seas,  and  perilous 
headlands,  and  the  shining  pharos,  he  must  apply  his  long- 
sighted eyes  to  the  petty  niceties  of  drawing,  or  measure  his 
inaccurate  mind  with  several  pages  of  consecutive  figures.  He  is 
a  wise  fouih,  to  be  sure,  who  can  balance  one  part  of  genuine 
life  against  two  parts  of  drudgery  between  four  walls,  and  for  the 
sake  of  the  one,  manfully  accept  the  other." 

Every  word  touching  his  university  career  moves  the  mind  to 
gratitude  that  he  was  not  too  far  misled  upon  the  beaten  routes 
of  fact,  and  had,  according  to  his  own  tale,  the  insolent  bravery 
to  remain  a  careless  student.  For,  from  the  first,  and  still  in 
growing  measure,  life  was  more  to  him  than  books  ;  his  course 
was    ever  a  deflection    from    the    cut-and-dried  programmes  of 

13 


preparation  to  the  secret  places  of  joy,  where  unseen  ministers 
lurked,  to  watch  and  tend  him.  But  even  if  he  could  confess,  in 
humorous  "retrospect,  that  **  no  one  ever  played  the  truant  with 
more  deliberate  care,  and  none  ever  had  more  certificates  for  less 
education,"  the  University  vouchsafed  him  something  better 
than  the  accumulated  wisdom  of  a  hundred  text-books  ;  that 
**  ruddy  drop  of  manly  blood"  transfused  from  friendship's 
veins  to  make  the  heart  throb  quicker  and  more  ardently. 
There  he  fell  across  Fleeming  Jenkin,  Professor  of  Engineering, 
a  nature  rare  among  thousands.  To  read  Stevenson's  own 
Memoir  of  Jenkin  is  to  learn  how  potently,  how  humanly,  lay 
upon  him  the  spell  of  that  high  and  striving  spirit.  Indeed,  the 
book  is  more  than  the  portrait  of  **a  good  man  of  most  dear 
memory"  ;  it  is  a  lucid  interpretation  of  Stevenson's  own  point 
of  view  in  biography,  and  of  the  qualities  he  chiefly  loved. 
To  him,  Jenkin  was  an  acknowledged  leader;  not,  how- 
ever, to  be  implicitly  followed,  for  there  were  times  when  he 
enforced  a  tactless  judgment,  and  left  his  pupil  bruised  and  bleed- 
ing. Such  error  was  inevitable  in  one  of  Jenkin's  calibre:  a  man 
of  extremes,  for  many  years  of  his  life,  until  experience  had 
moulded  him,  brusque  in  speech,  rash  in  opinion,  a  hot-headed 
champion,  always  ready  for  the  fray,  and  holding  the  foreign 
ground  of  a  quickly-conceived  argument  as  if  it  were  his  im- 
memorial freehold  ;  yet  so  truly  humble,  so  tractable  through 
the  affections,  so  honestly  worshipful  of  the  right,  that  his  very 
existence  sang  like  an  appeal  straight  to  the  honor-loving  heart. 
His  simplicity  of  purpose,  his  chivalry  of  feeling  must  have 
strengthened  daily  in  Stevenson  that  line  fibre  born  of  gentle- 
hood, and  his  heroic  ideals  heartened  the  lad  anew  for  the 
arduous  warfare  of  the  opening  world  ;  in  equal  measure,  must 
his  reverence  for  workmanship  have  confirmed  every  nascent 
desire  of  a  flawless  technique. 

Jenkin  delighted  in  the  Greeks,  their  obedience  to  proportion 
and  absolute  beauty.  He  was  a  student  of  the  drama,  and  held 
red-hot  opinions  on  the  artificial  requirements  of  the  stage  and 
the  exigent  art  of  acting.  He  reduced  the  principles  of  blank 
verse  to  involved  laws  of  rhythm,  betokening  keen  study  and  a 
delicate  ear.  Such  fervor  of  speculation  could  do  no  less  than 
set  the  younger  man's  mind  to  throbbing  anew  over  the  quest 
of  hidden  springs  of  harmony  in  prose  and  verse,  and  unravelling 
the  web  that  hangs  about  the  chamber  of  all  aesthetic  delight. 

To  know  one  man  who  has  chosen  conscientious  workman- 

H 


ship  for  the  religion  of  his  life,  is  a  liberal  education;  to  imbibe 
the  atmosphere  of  a  nation  tacitly  sworn  to  such  worship,  is  to 
**  hitch  your  wagon  to  a  star,"  and  fall  in  with  the  harmonious 
order  of  creation,  moving,  though  slowly,  toward  loveliness  and 
truth.  Among  the  formative  influences  on  Stevenson's  mind, 
who  shall  overestimate  the  spirit  of  France  ?  His  vivid,  breathing 
picture  of  student  life  at  Fontainebleau  is  a  bold  black-and-white, 
struck  off  in  some  moment  of  happy  inspiration,  of  the  Wander- 
jahr  of  youth.  There  in  the  Forest  linger,  for  a  happy  inter- 
lude, the  chosen  people,  dreaming,  learning,  scaling  heaven  with 
desire;  the  moment  of  youth  once  passed,  and  their  happy  pren- 
ticeship  over,  they  flit  away  into  the  rasping  world,  to  fill  the 
Salon,  and  starve  in  garrets,  or  brighten  the  walls  of  Croesus' 
gallery.  That  clear  sky,  the  dark,  rich  forest,  the  romance  of 
the  scene!  these  fire  the  soul,  while  the  sweet  content  of  days 
spent  in  the  toil  more  restful  than  any  idleness,  fosters  a  new 
birth,  a  happy  influx  of  vital  force. 

The  artist  fraternity  thrive,  as  in  natal  air,  amid  the  hour's 
bright  voluptuousness,  the  gay  comradeship,  the  charm  of  kindred 
pursuits;  and  the  literary  man  in  their  midst,  though  he  give 
himself  over  utterly  to  the  delights  of  pure  Bohemian  living,  is 
transfigured  into  an  eager  spirit,  instinct  with  fiery  desires  and 
great  imaginings.  He  is  prepared  for  action  by  the  fever  of 
futile  dreams;  colossal  visions  paint  themselves  on  his  brain,  and 
though  they  fail  and  fade,  the  memory  of  their  burning  there 
has  touched  the  tissue  of  his  mind  forever  to  finer  action.  More 
pregnant  still,  he  has  imbibed  that  **  something,  in  the  very  air 
of  France  that  communicates  the  love  of  style.  Precision, 
clarity,  the  cleanly  and  crafty  employment  of  material,  a  grace 
in  the  handling,  apart  from  any  value  in  the  thought,  seem  to  be 
acquired  by  the  mere  residence;  or  if  not  acquired,  become  at 
least  the  more  appreciated.  The  air  of  Paris  is  alive  with  this 
technical  inspiration.  And  to  leave  that  airy  city,  and  awake 
next  day  upon  the  borders  of  the  forest,  is  but  to  change  ex- 
ternals. The  same  spirit  of  dexterity  and  finish  breathes  from 
the  long  alleys  and  the  lofty  groves,  from  the  wildernesses  that 
are  still  pretty  in  their  confusion,  and  the  great  plain  that  con- 
trives to  be  decorative  in  its  emptiness." 

If  Stevenson  needed  to  be  hewn  into  shape,  to  be  polished, 
trimmed,  and  made  to  fit  the  groove  run  by  eternal  verities, 
he  must  have  had  that  happy  discipline  during  ever  so  short 
a  stay  among  the  traditions  of  the  one  nation  of  workmen.      He 

15 


could  not  have  failed  to  imbibe  from  the  Gallic  spirit  that  which 
comes  nearest  its  informing  religion,  the  **  passion  for  perfec- 
tion,*' and  to  learn  anew  what  so  rich  a  nature  is  ever  slow 
in  grasping,  the  harmony  of  a  just  proportion,  the  beauty  of 
restraint. 

A  man  who  is  a  reader  of  many  books,  yet  in  whom  the 
critical  faculty  lies  dead  or  dormant,  owned  once,  in  a  burst  of 
surprise  at  the  concensus  of  opinion  among  English-lovers,  that 
for  his  own  poor  part,  he  had  never  given  a  thought  to  Steven- 
son's style.  **For,"  said  he,  'Mt  is  perfectly  simple."  That 
seemed  to  me  the  topmost  leaf  of  praise,  except  that  I 
should  amend  it  by  a  word  and  call  it  almost  perfectly  simple. 
Sometimes  it  becomes  entirely  so,  and  then  you  see  the  true, 
inverted  image,  art  mirroring  the  world.  Again,  though  rarely, 
you  shall  guess  out  some  patient  chiselling  whereby  the  gem  was 
cut,  and  even  if  the  sun  strike  from  it  now  a  ray  like  light  itself, 
you  remember  the  serious  pains,  the  tentative  shiftings  of  that 
foregone  process  and  marvel  more  than  you  enjoy.  But  the 
time  was  coming,  if  this  mortal  base  of  things  had  not  failed  be- 
neath his  feet,  when  he  would  have  used  his  pen,  at  every  unerr- 
ing stroke,  like  another  hand,  in  large  unconsciousness;  when 
words  would  have  fitted  themselves  to  thought  like  angels'  song  to 
heavenly  lyre,  in  succession  so  harmonious  that  no  one  note 
could  be  imagined  otherwise.  "For,"  says  Clough,  "poetry, 
like  science,  has  its  final  precision;  and  there  are  expressions  of 
poetic  knowledge  which  can  no  more  be  rewritten  than  can  the 
elements  of  geometry.  There  are  pieces  of  poetic  language 
which,  try  as  men  will,  they  will  simply  have  to  recur  to,  and 
confess  that  it  has  been  done  before  them."  Art  is  living  and 
her  precedents  are  ever  forming.  As  age  on  age  has  laid  the 
pillars  of  the  earth,  so  day  by  day  has  built  the  pinnacles  of 
thought  above  her  air,  and  given  them  permanence.  A  few  are 
born  with  authority  to  catch  the  fleeting  influence  of  the  hour, 
and  bind  it  in  imperishable  form;  Stevenson  was  one.  At  his  best, 
he  made  the  phrases  hereafter  to  be  used  and  treasured,  but  never 
made  again.  And  the  greatest  was  to  come.  True,  he  was 
ever  the  master,  large  in  expedient,  learned  in  device,  but  an 
art  developing  as  his  would  inevitably  have  developed  to  the 
last,  under  a  sway  so  potent,  must  in  the  end  have  become  al- 
together plastic.  **I  would  fain  be  to  the  Eternal  Goodness 
what  his  own  hand  is  to  a  man,"  is  the  aspiring  cry  from 
the  old  Theologia  Germanica.  So,  reverently  be  it  said,  would 
i6 


have  become  the  spiritual  marrying  of  this  man  and  his  art, 
had  time,  and  time  alone,  fostered  their  gradual  union.  In  that 
happy  future,  he  must  have  grown  so  unconscious  of  his  manner 
of  saying  that  he  could  have  said  all  to  us  without  reserve;  we 
might  have  been  trusted  with  his  inner  thoughts,  the  daring  and 
the  delicate.  Giving  thus  unconstrainedly,  the  act  would  have 
had  the  largeness  and  divinity  of  the  gifts  of  love,  perfect  only 
when  self  is  unremembered.  But  to  guess  what  might  have 
been  had  we  followed  the  spirit  further  who  hung  entranced 
upon  its  shorter  way,  is  to  quarrel  with  the  sunrise.  Such  as 
we  knew  him,  he  was  like  none  other;  temperate  in  the  midst  of 
fantasy;  a  serenely-smiling  landscape,  though  played  upon  by  all 
the  lights  of  heaven;  full  of  a  happy  humor,  yet  persistent  in 
remaining  untouched  by  bitterness;  alive  to  the  ironies  of  life, 
yet  never  dabbling  wantonly  in  its  cruelty;  a  master  of  orna- 
ment, but  the  priest  of  simplicity;  and  above  all,  so  diverse 
in  gifts  that  his  work  might  easily  have  become  beauty  run 
mad,  had  not  his  passion  for  the  true  bound  it  within  her  happy 
trammeling. 

In  his  own  Essay  on  Style,  he  deprecates  the  shrinking  of  the 
many  who  would  never,  of  themselves,  resolve  a  finished  work 
into  its  ultimate  elements.  He  hesitates  before  disclosing  the 
scene-painter's  art  to  a  man  who  would  otherwise  swear  he 
looked  upon  real  trees  in  the  forest  of  Arden.  He  shrewdly 
suspects  the  existence  among  the  unlearned  of  those  who  will 
look  down  upon  the  happy  device  of  a  quick  eye  and  a  practised 
hand  as  the  tricks  of  the  trade;  but  nevertheless  he  throws  open 
the  workshop,  knowing  how  gladly  the  true  artist  will  step 
within,  to  muse,  and  ponder,  and  revere  the  more,  while  the  un- 
critical multitude  but  stare  and  mouth,  and  go  away  to  spill  their 
spleen.  To  apply  to  his  own  work  the  very  method  of  analysis 
employed  in  this  same  essay,  and  unravel  where  he  wove,  is  to 
meet  beauty  face  to  face,  a  snow-crystal  far  more  entrancing 
underneath  the  lens  than  in  its  floating  vagueness  and  entirety. 
He  is,  above  all,  a  master  of  directness  enriched  by  diversity. 
He  tells  a  story  with  the  unpretending  vividness  of  an  eye-wit- 
ness, the  while  he  draws  upon  that  priceless  gift  of  illuminating 
the  barest  fact  with  light  that,  for  the  untaught  eye,  was  never 
yet  on  sea  or  land,  and  adds  a  glory  to  the  heavens  themselves, 
by  true  interpretation  of  their  countenance.  Read  certain  of 
his  simplest  pages  and  you  feel  the  mind  expand,  as  one  should 
hear  a  sculptor's  exposition  of  the  human  form,  and  thenceforth 

17 


view  that  fairest  temple  with  a  finer  insight,  a  purer  love.  Na- 
ture is  not  inadequate,  conned  thus  at  second-hand;  taught  by  a 
master  to  observe,  you  begin  to  see  her  through  poetic  eyes, 
and  so,  at  last,  to  see  her  truly. 

In  a  mind  so  bountiful,  what  crowding  imagery  must  have 
risen  at  every  breath!  Fancies  must  have  clothed  themselves, 
at  the  outset,  in  drapery  too  rich  and  heavy  for  the  common 
wear.  Life  was,  indeed,  for  him,  a  procession  clad  in  purple. 
Such  prodigality,  be  it  said  again,  might  easily  have  **o'erleaped 
itself "  and  marched  through  volumes  in  fantastic  motley.  But 
no!  even  at  the  height  of  vital  emotion,  he  is  ever  austere 
and  temperate  He  never  forgets  the  just  proportions  of  life 
though  won  upon  by  all  the  uttermost  jcys  of  the  universe.  See 
what  he  says  of  the  commonest  phenomena,  embalming  the 
fleeting  glory  of  a  moment  in  immemorial  phrase: 

'*A11  the  gold  had  withered  out  of  the  sky."  (Do  we  keep 
the  twilight  image  so?) 

**I  have  never  seen  such  a  night.  It  seemed  to  throw 
calumny  in  the  teeth  of  all  the  painters  that  ever  dabbled  in 
starlight.  The  sky  itself  was  of  a  ruddy,  powerful,  nameless, 
changing  color,  dark  and  glossy  like  a  serpent's  back.  The 
stars,  by  innumerable  millions,  stuck  boldly  forth  like  lamps. 
The  MilkyWay  was  bright,  like  a  moonlit  cloud;  half  heaven 
seemed  Milky  Way.  The  great  luminaries  shone  each  more 
clearly  than  a  winter's  moon.  Their  light  was  dyed  with  every 
sort  of  color  —  red,  like  fire;  blue,  like  steel;  green,  like  the 
tracks  of  sunset;  and  so  sharply  did  each  stand  forth  in  its  own 
lustre  that  there  was  no  appearance  of  that  flat,  star-spangled 
arch  we  know  so  well  in  pictures,  but  all  the  hollow  of  heaven 
was  one  chaos  of  contesting  luminaries —  a  hurly-burly  of  stars. 
Against  this  the  hills  and  rugged  tree-tops  stood  out  redly 
dark." 

"  The  waves  which  lap  so  quietly  about  the  jetties  of  Monte- 
rey grow  louder  and  larger  in  the  distance;  you  can  see  the 
breakers  leaping  high  and  white  by  day;  at  night,  the  outline  of 
the  shore  is  traced  in  transparent  silver  by  the  moonlight  and 
the  flying  foam;  and  from  all  round,  even  in  quiet  weather,  the 
low,  distant,  thrilling  roar  of  the  Pacific  hangs  over  the  coast 
and  the  adjacent  country  like  smoke  above  a  battle." 

**The  wind  huddled  the  trees.     The  golden  specks  of  autumn 
in  the  birches  tossed  shiveringly.      Overhead,  the  sky  was  full  of 
strings  and  shreds  of  vapour,  flying,  vanishing,  reappearing,  and 
i8 


turning  about  an  axis  like  tumblers,  as  the  wind  hounded  them 
through  heaven." 

**The  wind  had  veered  more  to  the  north,  and  no  longer 
reached  me  in  the  glen;  but  as  I  was  going  on  with  my  prepara- 
tions, it  drove  a  white  cloud  very  swiftly  over  the  hill-top;  and 
looking  up,  I  was  surprised  to  see  the  cloud  dyed  with  gold. 
In  these  high  regions  of  the  air,  the  sun  was  already  shining  as 
at  noon.  If  only  the  clouds  travelled  high  enough,  we  should 
see  the  same  thing  all  night  long.  For  it  is  always  daylight  in 
the  fields  of  space." 

All  the  more  primitive  devices  of  sounds  and  their  combina- 
tion were  open  to  his  hand.  Alliteration,  that  delicate-handed 
slave  but  most  barbaric  master,  served  him  with  a  deftness  so 
perfect  you  hardly  guessed  her  to  be  there.  The  recurrent 
beat  of  sound  allured  him,  even  in  its  crudest  form,  and  one  who 
knows  even  slightly  the  texture  of  the  Stevenson  mind,  will 
guess  his  lasting  kinship  with  the  state  of  feeling  described  in 
his  own  humorous  anecdote  of  the  Philosophical  Society  before 
which  one  curious  lad  propounded  the  ingenious  problem: 

**  *  What  would  be  the  result  of  putting  a  pound  of  potassium 
in  a  pot  of  porter?'  *I  should  think  there  would  be  a  number 
of  interesting  bi-products,'  said  a  smatterer  at  my  elbow;  but 
for  me  the  tale  itself  has  a  bi-product,  and  stands  as  a  type  of 
much  that  is  most  human.  For  this  inquirer,  who  conceived 
himself  to  burn  with  a  zeal  entirely  chemical,  was  really  im- 
mersed in  a  design  of  a  quite  different  nature;  unconsciously  to  his 
own  recently-breeched  intelligence,  he  was  engaged  in  literature. 
Putting,  pound,  potassium,  pot,  porter;  initial  p,  mediant  t  — 
that  was  his  idea,  poor  little  boy  !  " 

So  did  Emerson  forget  the  play  before  him,  when  one  phrase, 
"the  glimpses  of  the  moon,"  withdrew  him  to  another  field 
more  germane  to  his  mind;  and  Stevenson,  though  not  to  be 
misled  through  tracts  of  emptiness  by  **jingling  words,"  pricked 
up  his  ears  at  their  summoning,  like  a  dozing  hound  who  hears, 
afar,  the  hunter's  horn.  Yet  so  skilful  is  his  use  of  this  device 
that,  in  his  absolutely  fortunate  passages,  you  never  note  it. 
You  only  know  that  the  words  have  a  melodious  succession,  sound 
following  sound  in  measured  diversity,  like  twisted  gold  and 
silver  in  a  braid.  In  his  verse,  it  becomes,  of  course,  more  ap- 
parent, notably  and  inevitably  in  the  Child's  Garden,  where,  with 
a  nice  appreciation  of  the  primitive  form  due  to  childish  themes, 
he  allows  himself  a  measured  cadence,  and  constant  recurrence 
of  sound.  jg 


He  has  a  true  and  delicate  ear  for  rhythm,  that  haunting 
quality  born  to  send  one  sentence  lilting  along  in  darting  swal- 
low-flights, another  in  measured  curves  like  the  crow  **to  the 
rooky  wood,"  and  the  next  with  eagle-sweep  to  the  mountain- 
tops.  This  is  forever  a  question  of  ear.  It  is  taught  in  no 
academy  nor  is  necessarily  to  be  apprehended  by  the  master  of 
a  system.  If  you  have  it  not,  you  have  it  not,  and  there's  an 
end  on't;  no  diligence  shall  amend  your  lack.    Stevenson  had  it. 

**From  time  to  time,  a  warm  wind  rustled  down  the  valley, 
and  set  all  the  chestnuts  dangling  their  bunches  of  foliage  and 
fruit.  The  ear  was  filled  with  whispering  music,  and  the 
shadows  danced  in  tune." 

**It  was  a  long  look  forward;  the  future  summoned  me  as 
with  trumpet  calls,  it  warned  me  back  as  with  a  voice  of  weep- 
ing and  beseeching;  and  I  thrilled  and  trembled  on  the  brink  of 
life,  like  a  childish  bather  on  the  beach." 

**Such  was  his  tenderness  for  others,  such  his  instinct  of  fine 
courtesy  and  pride,  that  of  that  impure  passion  of  remorse  he 
never  breathed  a  syllable.  Even  regret  was  rare  with  him,  and 
pointed  with  a  jest." 

**We  had  a  shower  or  two,  but  light  and  flying.  The  air 
was  clean  and  sweet  among  all  these  green  fields  and  green  things 
growing." 

**The  spring  green  brightens  in  the  wood,  or  the  field  grows 
black  under  a  moving  ploughshare." 

And  this  is  the  moment  for  remembering  that  such  love  of 
lilting  progress  never  beguiled  him  into  letting  his  work  become 
a  shade  more  (and  therefore  less)  than  honest  prose.  For 
that  haunting,  teasing  quality  of  certain  picturesque  narrative, 
for  that  bastard  writing  so  falsely  ambitious  as  to  mislead  the 
mind,  from  moment  to  moment,  into  an  uneasy  sense  of  mea- 
sured lines,  an  irritated  desire  for  their  perfecting,  he  had  no 
patience.  A  too-poetical  prose,  it  is  safe  to  guess,  would  have 
repelled  him  more  than  prosaic  verse  carefully  constructed  and 
honestly  meant. 

He  had  an  inborn  delight  in  names  for  their  own  sake,  quite 
independent  of  their  association  and  birth.  As  Southey  cher- 
ished the  scheme  of  planting  his  Pantisocracy  on  the  banks  of 
the  Susquehanna  because  the  river's  name  chimed  happily  with 
his  thought,  and  as  many  of  us  hold  the  nightingale  the  closer- 
wedded  to  music  for  the  fall  of  her  three  melodious  syllables,  so 
is  it  ever  with   him.       One  of  his  paragraphs  especially  so  feeds 


the  appetite  for  empty  sound  that  I  have  to  rehearse  it, 
not  because  I  have  walked  by  Allan  Water  or  know  the  voice  of 
the  trickling  of  Allermuir,  but  because  it  richly  ministers  to 
love  of  melody  alone. 

**But  the  streams  of  Scotland  are  incomparable  in  themselves 
—  or  I  am  only  the  more  Scottish  to  suppose  so — and  their 
sound  and  colour  dwell  forever  in  the  memory.  How  often 
and  willingly  do  I  not  look  again  in  fancy  on  Tummel,  or 
Manor,  or  the  talking  Airdle,  or  Dee  swirling  in  its  Lynn;  on 
the  bright  burn  of  Kinnaird,  or  the  golden  burn  that  pours  and 
sulks  in  the  den  behind  Kingussie  !  I  think  shame  to  leave  out 
one  of  these  enchantresses,  but  the  list  would  grow  too  long  if 
I  remembered  all;  only  I  may  not  forget  Allan  Water,  nor 
birch-wetting  Rogie,  nor  yet  Almond;  nor,  for  all  its  pollutions, 
that  water  of  Leith  of  the  many  and  well-named  mills  —  Bell's 
Mills,  and  Canon  Mills,  and  Silver  Mills;  nor  Redford  Burn  of 
pleasant  memories;  nor  yet,  for  all  its  smallness,  that  nameless 
trickle  that  springs  in  the  green  bosom  of  Allermuir,  and  is  fed 
from  Halkerside  with  a  perennial  teacupful,  and  threads  the  moss 
under  the  Shearer's  Knowe,  and  makes  one  pool  there,  overhung 
by  a  rock,  where  I  loved  to  sit  and  make  bad  verses,  and  is  then 
kidnapped  in  its  infancy  by  subterranean  pipes  for  the  service  of 
the  sea-beholding  city  in  the  plain." 

Yet,  caressing  words  for  their  comeliness,  he  was  never  be- 
trayed into  the  maze  of  empty  sound;  the  universe  meant  too 
much  to  him.  Being,  to  his  mind,  was  ever  more  than  singing, 
and  a  golden  sunrise  put  even  ringing  periods  to  scorn. 

Inseparable  from  his  mastery  over  rhythm,  stands  his  manipula- 
tion of  the  perfect  sequence  of  phrase  and  sentence,  the  fortunate 
close.  As  in  music,  a  transposed  measure  yearns  back  to  the 
keynote,  for  which  the  ear  has  been  longing,  though  uncon- 
sciously, all  the  while,  so  will  his  periods  settle  gently  to  earth, 
and  let  the  mind  breathe  and  recover,  before  the  lark  begins 
again.  But  here,  also,  he  avoids  the  snare  of  ending  too  often 
on  a  one-syllabled  word,  a  beguiling  device  calculated,  when  run 
too  far,  to  make  pseudo-poetry  out  of  prose.  You  come  upon 
one  such  restful  drop  and  conclusion  and  then  another;  but  just 
as  the  spying  mind  cries  out  in  triumph  at  having  discovered  a 
method  (like  seeing  the  rabbit  go  into  the  hat),  the  magician 
turns  coolly  about,  and  does  it  another  way.  Now  he  closes 
with  two  syllables,  and  again  with  three,  lest  simplicity  become 
hide-bound,  without  the  unexpected  and  diverse.      Yet  not  all 


this  nicety  is  a  conscious  taking  thought  for  the  sentence,  O 
learner  of  a  master's  art!  He  needs  not  to  say,  **Here  is  bar- 
renness clamoring  for  the  enrichment  of  diversity;  so  to't  with 
another  syllable!"  Nay,  any  more  than  your  musician,  at  his 
improvising,  shall  murmur,  **  The  first,  third  and  fifth,"  in 
striking  the  perfect  chord;  he  simply  feels  out  the  higher  har- 
mony through  a  divine  instinct  perfected  by  happy  use. 

Down  to  the  barest  bones  of  language,  his  mastery  holds. 
With  that  large  carelessness  so  deluding  to  the  onlooker,  he 
steers  merrily  past  the  ordinary  pitfalls  of  composition,  and 
you  grow  light-hearted  in  his  company,  fancying  none  are  there. 
So  does  he  control  and  almost  efface  the  relative  pronoun,  apt 
always  to  obtrude  its  presence,  like  mastic  oozing  through  a 
loosely-laid  mosaic.  He  is  chary  enough  of  the  present  partici- 
ple, effective  in  the  piling-up  of  rhetorical  periods,  but  too  un- 
wieldy for  his  dainty  and  delicate  purposes. 

Everywhere  shall  you  come  upon  the  same  considered  work- 
manship, though  differing  in  splendor.  Poetry  can  scarce  rise 
higher  than  the  Panlike  eloquence  of  Virginibus  Puerisque,  and 
when  you  follow  him  afield,  you  shall  find  the  earth  and  heaven 
illuminated  with  touch  on  touch  of  incommunicable  art.  The 
humor  of  the  world,  the  rare  witchery  of  its  human  phases,  the 
splendor  of  a  star,  the  fine  remoteness  of  a  donkey's  graver 
moods,  —  he  knows  the  very  word  of  words  to  paint  the  true 
complexion  of  appearances;  the  word,  and  how  to  link  it  to  its 
fellows.  If  any  arise  capable  of  censuring  his  style,  I  believe  it 
will  be  in  large  and  never  in  little.  Scarcely  a  sentence  can  be 
found  unsatisfying,  but  the  linked  phrasing  of  paragraphs  does 
not  always  measure  our  desire.  The  parts  are  exquisite,  but  at 
moments  they  do  not  cohere  with  the  strength  of  stone.  The 
mind  is  sometimes,  though  briefly,  drawn  off  the  scent.  Instead 
of  counting  four  at  his  periods,  you  count  five,  or,  it  may  be, 
seven,  while  you  think.  One  sentence  does  not  grip  its  neigh- 
bor with  hooks  of  steel,  and  so  on  through  the  argument.  They 
are  like  priceless  gems  unset,  like  flowers  but  loosely  garlanded. 
Thus  an  essay  is  destined  to  live  in  the  memory,  not  as  an  im- 
perishable form,  but  a  series  of  beautiful  successions.  Is  this,  as 
one  asserts,  because,  like  Emerson,  he  had  no  formulated  theory 
of  life?  I  believe  it  is  more,  or  rather  less  than  that;  it  seems 
also  to  refer  itself  to  causes  less  abstract  and  more  mechanical. 
In  his  tendency  toward  picturesque  statement,  he  ignored 
dialectic  for  poetic  beauty  of  phrase.      He  was  less  anxious  to 


convince  than  to  state  harmoniously,  and  he  loved  each  sentence 
w^ith  an  individual  love,  turning  and  polishing  until  it  waxed  in 
delicate  strength  and  asserted  itself  bodily  and  valiantly.  Thus 
you  forget  the  forest  for  the  trees;  you  look  and  wonder,  brood- 
ing over  each,  its  curious  growth  and  beauty.  Yet  when  all  is 
said,  the  most  captious  must  own  himself  humbled  if  he  turn  to 
The  Lantern  Bearers,  and  to  Pulvis  et  Umbra,  compact  and  per- 
fect worlds  thrown  off  to  spin  through  space,  in  tracks  of  beauty 
laid  from  farthest  time.  Old  Mortality,  also,  holds  a  passage  of 
prose  so  harmonious  and  perfect  as  forever  to  defy  criticism. 
Possibly  it  remains  for  the  man  of  single  purpose  to  build  up  ar- 
guments; the  rhapsodist,  to  whom  life  calls  in  many  voices,  will 
scarce  pursue  his  path  save  by  lines  bending  where  fancy  draws 
him.  Here  in  our  doubtful  day  lived  the  sprite  turned  philoso- 
pher, and  praised  be  all  the  fostering  gods !  he  dared  express 
himself  as  nature  bade. 

It  is  difficult  to  regard  his  critical  work  studiously,  save 
with  a  wandering  eye,  drawn  momently  away  from  the  canvas  to 
the  artist  himself.  (And  thus  it  is  ever  with  Stevenson.  You 
go  to  seek  a  book  ;  you  find  —  a  man.  You  strive  to  estimate 
his  championship  of  beauty,  and  straightway  it  pales  and  loses 
lustre  beside  his  contribution  to  the  code  of  life.  For,  in  his 
eyes,  even  literature  is  a  small  matter  beside  the  march  of  shining 
deeds,  and,  seen  in  the  light  of  action,  the  rounded  circle  of  the 
arts  forms  but  an  added  means  by  which  we  really  live  to  look  on 
a  beautiful  face,  or  a  day  in  June. )  It  is  impossible  to  overpraise 
his  temperance  in  judging  another  ;  his  dignity,  as  that  of  a  gentle- 
man among  his  fellows.  The  preface  to  that  rich  library  of  criti- 
cism, the  Familiar  Studies  of  Men  and  Books,  is  almost  strenu- 
ous in  its  desire  of  speaking  with  justice,  almost  pathetic  in  its 
beautiful  humility.  (This  business  of  ticketing  souls  becomes  a 
ticklish  one.  He  knows  it,  our  wise  Scot  !)  But,  if  you  think 
he  cringes,  or  falters,  or  balks  at  a  strong  opinion,  you  have  not 
read  him  truly.  He  can  thrust  as  well  as  another,  but  only  un- 
der the  rules  of  the  game.  He  must  have  his  quarrel  just.  And 
ever,  as  the  mind  reverts  to  the  man  Stevenson,  behind  the  mask  of 
authority,  inevitably  weighing  what  he  does  by  constant  reference 
to  what  he  is,  it  finds  him  the  catholic  soul,  and  so,  as  heat  and 
light  are  one,  in  equal  measure  the  soul  of  love.  Carefully  he 
chooses  his  point  of  view,  sure  always  to  be  on  the  hither  side  of 
mercy  ;  but  when  the  time  does  come  for  swords,  he  wields  a 
righteous  blade.      How  he  probes  to  the  quick  the  poor  vanity  of 

23 


Burns' s  gangrened  sensuality,  casting  aside,  like  a  flimsy  rag,  the 
spurious  romance  that  would  hide  the  sore  !  He  has  no  word 
dark  enough  for  the  pity  of  that  battle  lost,  the  youthful  armor 
scarred,  the  pennon  dragging  in  the  mire,  fit  only  now  to  wrap  a 
courtesan.  Yet  when  he  has  illumined  every  dint  in  that  marred 
honor,  and  bade  you  remember  how  mercilessly  clear  is  heaven's 
light,  be  the  sinner  poet,  ploughman  or  king,  he  hesitates  ;  not  to 
withdraw  a  line,  but  to  bid  himself  be  gentle  in  his  thought. 
Burns' s  moral  frivolity,  his  unhealthful  dallying  in  the  pathway  of 
decay  and  loss,  offend  him  bitterly  ;  but  he  pauses  to  own  not 
only  his  profound  compassion  for  this  poor  victim  of  a  will 
diseased,  but  to  confess  himself  penetrated  to  the  soul  by  the 
man's  desperate  efforts  to  do  right. 

Stevenson  had  too  keen  a  sense  of  humor  to  accord  Walt  Whit- 
man an  undivided  homage.  He  wraps  him  in  clouded  praise, 
but  straightway  he  fears  lest  he  may  not  have  shown  his  true 
worship  for  so  good  a  man,  one  whom  defective  art  could  never 
altogether  condemn  since  he  lived  and  saw  the  glory  of  life. 
For  Thoreau,  he  owns  a  divided  love,  warmly  responsive  to  a 
maker  of  English  like  that  carved  out  in  Concord  woods,  crown- 
ing a  philosophy  at  times  so  remote  and  rarefied  ;  still  he  confesses 
to  a  noble  impatience  of  the  man  who  enchains  him,  judging  him  to 
have  been  a  skulker,  a  creature  content  to  keep  warm  and  shielded 
in  withdrawal  from  his  kind,  preserving  that  delicate  health  of 
the  soul  which  is  more  sickly  than  disease.  For  Charles  of  Or- 
leans, the  clever  craftsman  at  a  verse,  the  undecided  and  inactive 
in  the  clamoring  afi^airs  of  life,  and  for  Villon,  the  radically  un- 
chaste of  soul,  he  disdains  no  healthy  thrust  ;  but  with  each, 
**  God  made  him,"  he  concludes,  **  therefore  let  him  pass  for  a 
man." 

Surely  a  more  diverse  company  was  never  got  together  by  re- 
viewer's drum  and  fife  !  But  motley  as  they  are,  and  some  of 
rhem  all  undeserving,  in  different  measure  he  takes  them  to  his 
heart.  Even  when  his  pen  strikes  on  evil  deeds,  he  still  keeps 
the  attitude  that  is  nowhere  better  described  than  in  Loudon 
Dodd's  summary  of  his  own  *'unconsenting  fondness"  for  Captain 
Nares.  **The  faults  were  all  embraced  in  a  more  generous 
view.  I  saw  them  in  their  place,  like  discords  in  a  musical  pro- 
gression ;  and  accepted  them  and  found  them  picturesque,  as 
we  accept  and  admire,  in  the  habitable  face  of  nature,  the  smoky 
head  of  the  volcano  or  the  pernicious  thicket  of  the  swamp." 

Here  is  Hugo  the  Great,  entrancing  the  warm-blooded  critic 


through  his  romanticism  ;  Yoshida-Torajiro,  the  martyr-hero, 
who  threw  his  life,  doubtless  longing  for  a  greater  than  life  for 
one  cast  more,  into  a  losing,  —  nay,  at  that  time,  almost  a  non-ex- 
istent cause  ;  and  John  Knox,  woman's  private  sympathizer  and 
her  public  foe.  Even  Pepys,  at  whose  pose  he  expresses  more 
surprise  than  is  common  with  him,  he  accepts  with  a  certain 
smiling  tolerance  ;  the  frank,  voluptuous  enjoyment  of  the  man, 
his  candid  selfishness,  his  magnifying  touch  whereby  all  the  com- 
monest pleasures  of  life  were  greatened  into  large  delights,  —  all 
this  facility  in  garnering  joy  for  purely  private  ends,  awoke  in 
him  an  aching  sympathy.  If  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  ever  failed 
in  understanding  men,  it  was  not  because  he  did  not  keep  his 
nearness  to  them  ;  if  he  ever  struck  too  deep,  it  was  not  because 
he  aimed  the  blow  in  wilful  blindness  or  in  lack  of  awe. 

He  knows  such  deep  truths  of  the  soul  and  its  action  as  if  he  had 
penetrated,  for  one  fearful  moment,  into  the  secret  arcana  where 
God  judges  and  man  has  ceased  to  guess.  As  life  cries  to  him 
from  a  hundred  points,  so  also  does  humankind.  In  his  sight, 
the  living  soul  is  a  thing  of  reverence  and  wonder,  whatever  the 
deed  it  blindly  did;  whoever  shall  probe  it  too  daringly,  who- 
ever shall  wound  the  face  of  God  in  man,  **  it  were  better  for  him 
that  a  millstone  were  hanged  about  his  neck,  and  that  he  were 
drowned  in  the  depth  of  the  sea. ' '  Is  his  brother  not  clear-sighted 
nor  strong  of  hand,  to  work  a  righteous  will  ?  Then  what  ?  But 
for  the  grace  of  God,  inexplicable  in  dealing,  places  had  been  re- 
versed, and,  *' handy,  dandy,  which  is  the  justice,  which  is  the 
thief?  '*  Believing  so  with  all  his  sober  heart,  judgment  put  on  the 
cap  of  kindliness,  and  became  that  heavenly  charity  we  are  wont 
to  glorify  afar.  He  is  so  wise  a  man,  this  friend  of  men!  For  he 
knows  also  that  the  soul  is  ever  mute  before  her  adversary,  life. 
She  cannot  express  herself;  still  less  shall  she  be  understood,  and 
when  he  stands  silent  before  her,  neither  quite  condemning  nor 
releasing  her  from  blame,  he  is  like  the  Hindoo  who  dare  not 
kill,  lest  he  strike  the  soul  of  his  grandam.  For  we  who  live  in 
such  fastnesses  of  ignorance  and  pain,  when  we  take  it  upon  our- 
selves to  flout  another  know  not  what  we  do.  Shall  we  kick  the 
dog  who  roils  the  water,  not  guessing  a  prince  would  bathe  there 
presently?  Shall  we  curse  the  blind  man  who  falls  against  us 
in  the  way?  Shall  we,  who  are  but  motes  above  this  teeming 
ball  of  energy,  presume  to  guess  the  indirection  of  another  mote, 
spinning  as  mysteriously  at  our  side?  Nay,  he  knows  better,  and 
thus  is  he,  after  Lamb,  his  master  in  letters,  the  most  loving 
among  critics,  the  sparing  in  abuse,  the  prodigal  of  praise.     25 


His  poetic  work  is  very  evidently  not  his  natural  utterance.  Yet 
it  rings  true  enough  to  feed  the  desire  of  guessing  what  it  might 
have  been,  had  the  full  current  of  his  emotion  dashed,  foaming  yet 
deep,  between  the  golden  cliffs  of  rhythm  and  rhyme.  To  the 
general  eye,  the  maker  has  reached  his  topmost  estate  when  he 
sets  his  thought  in  the  mould  of  ordered  verse.  Possibly  we  see 
it  so  because  we  are  not  yet  far  from  the  childhood  of  the  race, 
delighting  in  form  and  pleased  by  melody's  recurrent  beat;  or  it 
may  be  the  tacit  belief  that  man  only  partakes  in  inspiration 
when  he  improvises,  snatching  from  every  air  of  heaven  new 
breath  to  voice  his  ecstasy.  Escaped  from  self,  he  nears  the 
greater  sea.  In  such  high  estimate,  the  requirements  of  verse  are 
no  rigorous  trammels;  save  as  the  intervals  of  the  scale  make  the 
happy  limitations  of  harmony,  or  as  God  has  set  a  measure  to 
the  tide.  If  we,  the  underlings  of  letters,  find  in  ourselves  but 
a  glowing  of  the  rage  for  rhyme,  we  fan  it  mightily,  and  work 
ourselves  up,  under  its  *' whiff  and  wind,"  into  a  dervish  fury. 
But  with  Stevenson,  great  prose  was  evidently  more  to  be  de- 
sired than  monumental  verse;  he  could  write  in  rhyme,  but  *'  he 
had  elsewhere  his  inheritance."  He  is  master  of  a  true  and 
lucid  blank  verse  (strangely  enough,  for  under  Fleeming  Jenkin 
he  must  have  followed  such  over-refinements  of  analysis  as  to 
paralyze  a  less  buoyant  mind,  drive  the  creative  sense  out  of  door, 
and  leave  invention  sitting  idle  in  a  barren  house),  and  his 
rhymed  couplets  are  at  times  extraordinarily  delicate  in  touch  and 
finish.  The  House  Beautiful,  inviting  to  the  inner  sense  as  fine 
frostwork  upon  glass,  has  the  touch  of  Emerson  in  his  more  dry- 
adic  moods,  like  horn  calling  unto  echo,  while  we,  poised  in 
our  skiff  between,  listen  and  wait,  scarce  knowing  which  is 
lovelier.  This  is  the  note  of  the  shepherd  philosopher  who 
reads  the  heavens  and  sees  all's  well,  though  his  carpeting  be  of 
sod,  and  the  stars  his  only  light;  this  is  the  wood-spirit,  informed 
and  set  aflame  with  all  the  joy  of  being.  Like  Emerson,  too, 
he  beholds  the  vision  of  evanescent  beauty,  the  rapt,  elusive 
sprite,  the  happy  sequence  of  joy  never  quite  attained.  The 
Garden  breathes  all  the  simplicity  of  an  Horatian  message;  the 
word  of  one  who  loves  trifles,  finding  nothing  too  small  to  love. 
And  in  verse  upon  verse,  here  and  everywhere,  are  the  pledges 
of  spiritual  kinship,  friend  calling  unto  friend,  the  sprite  from 
his  hearthstone  sending  skoal  to  James,  to  Henley,  to  Katharine 
de  Mattos,  to  the  few  among  his  chosen.  The  imprint  of  the 
human  is  on  them  all.  How  they  satisfy  the  ear,  while  yet  they 
26 


seek  the  heart !  The  delicate  message  to  Will  H.  Low  ends  in 
four  lines  of  ever-memorable  beauty,  giving  forth  the  inevitable 
ring  of  great  and  elemental  literature  : 

"  Where  hath  fleeting  beauty  led  ? 
To  the  doorway  of  the  dead. 
Life  is  over,  life  was  gay: 
We  have  come  the  primrose  way." 

The  Celestial  Surgeon  reiterates  his  perpetual  longing  to  drink 
the  all  of  life.  **  Probe  me!"  he  cries,  in  challenge  of  the  un- 
known physician.  **  If  I  have  not  lived,  leave  not  my  heart 
inert,  but  pierce  it  deeper,  and  waken  it  anew."  Is  this  a 
diviner  ecstasy  of  being  than  the  animating  spirit  of  Rabbi  Ben 
Ezra,  heretofore  the  greatest  embodiment  of  a  great  consent  ? 
With  Browning,  the  potter  and  his  clay  ;  patience  under  pain. 
With  Stevenson,  not  alone  the  acquiescence  of  suffering,  but  the 
quivering  flesh  reaching  upward  to  the  knife,  as  Psyche's  lips  to 
Love.  All  this  unpretending  verse  is  sweetened  by  a  rare 
asceticism.  He  is  not  among  those  who  overload  the  line  with 
ornament,  as  if  a  hand  should  be  more  than  a  hand,  gaining  the 
barbarism  of  gems.  Still  will  he  **use  all  gently,"  but  now 
and  again  you  come  upon  some  perfect  phrase  create  to  haunt  the 
memory: 

"For  love  of  lovely  words." 

"  And  from  the  shore  hear  inland  voices  call.  " 

**  You  put  your  frosted  wildings  forth. 
And  on  the  heath,  afar  from  man, 
A  strong  and  bitter  virgin  ran." 

Then  again  springs  a  spontaneous  living  verse,  like  the  one 
born  of  solitude  and  stillness  among  the  pines  : — 

*'  The  bed  was  made,  the  room  was  fit. 
By  punctual  eve  the  stars  were  lit ; 
The  air  was  still,  the  water  ran. 
No  need  was  there  for  maid  or  man. 
When  we  put  up,  my  ass  and  I, 
At  God's  green  caravanserai.  " 

"  Sing  clearlier.  Muse  !   or  evermore  be  still. 
Sing  truer  or  no  longer  sing  !  " 

27 


Thus  does  he  pray  for  lyric  health  and  freshness.  But  ever- 
more throughout  his  nicety  of  word  and  phrase,  sounds  the 
ceaseless  aspiration  for  courage,  for  heroic  doing  though  the  hour 
be  dull.  This  man  needed  no  silver  trumpet  to  sound  the  onset; 
he  could  have  preluded  Roncesvalles  with  a  fish-horn.  The 
scope  of  his  longing  was  vast,  but  plainly  put  ;  it  was  enough  if 
he  proved  not  unworthy  those  bygone  generations  of  sea-warders, 
who  set  the  coast  with  guardian  lights.  Three,  at  least,  among 
his  poems  need  no  word  of  praise  :  his  Requiem,  '*  In  the 
Highlands,  in  the  country  places'*  (that  sad  reaching  for  the 
*' hills  of  home"),  and  Ticonderoga,  a  ballad  wrought  in  flame. 
The  Child's  Garden  of  Verse  is  surely  not  so  much  a  book 
for  children  as  for  the  child  who  lives,  lone  and  pining,  in  the 
secret  soul  of  every  one  of  us.  It  w?s  transcribed  within  the 
very  inner  circle  of  childhood,  the  fairy  ring,  to  recall  us  who 
have  been  pushed  outside  it  through  grosser  bulk  of  body  (not 
of  soul  !)  back  again  to  our  lost  ineffable  joys  and  buried  griefs, 
sweeter  now  than  the  triumphs  of  a  later  time.  '*  This  is  the 
land,"  we  cry.  "  Here  lies  it  still,  the  rolling  heights,  the  pleasant 
ways  and  darkling  waters.  Here  it  is,  goblin  land,  land  o'  dreams. 
The  towers  are  standing,  unchanged  save  by  thickening  ivy-spray; 
in  twilight  corners  the  old-time  shadows  lurk,  far  as  we  have 
marched  from  them,  this  many  a  year.  They  could  not  follow 
us,  for  other  fears  rose  up  and  thrust  them  from  the  track,  but 
God  be  thanked  !  they  stayed  for  our  revisiting."  Children 
themselves  (the  unfledged  beings  who  bear  the  name  ;  not  we  old 
folks,  quite  as  little,  but  forced  to  tilt  all  day  in  armor  too  big, 
and  with  weapons  too  heavy  for  us  !),  real  children  love  the  high- 
sounding  narrative,  beginning  **  once  upon  a  time,"  and  manipu- 
lating nothing  less  than  blood  royal  ;  an  exaggerated  simplicity 
may  enwrap  it,  but  he  who  would  wholly  please  must  give  them  a 
picture,  possibly  not  destitute  of  the  grotesque,  but  always  a  pic- 
ture. They  will  have  rose-gardens  and  magic  steeds,  and  maids 
with  golden,  Maeterlinck  locks,  long  enough  to  make  the  prince's 
ladder;  but  the  reminiscent  emotion  of  the  Child's  Garden  is 
only  the  commonplace  of  their  little  day.  They  are  like  the 
farmer,  come  to  town  and  confronted  by  the  typical  rustic  on  the 
stage.  Give  him  ambrosia  for  festival  ;  not  his  own  honey  made 
by  the  bees  he  bought  and  hived  with  his  own  hands  !  This, 
however,  is  a  grown  folk's  poor  opinion  ;  the  vote  of  any  dozen 
children  may  give  it  the  lie.  But  for  us  who  stray  into  that 
garden,   and  wander  up  and  down  its  green-laid  ways,  it  would 


be  difficult  to  tell  how  truly  we  are  at  home  there,  how  well 
content.  Not  many  pages  read,  we  stop  in  sheer  delight.  **0 
you  darling!  "  we  cry,  and  whether  it  is  the  child  Louis  we 
mean,  or  the  child  half-forgotten  yet  still  wakeful,  in  our  own 
dusty  past,  we  know  not.  At  least  it  is  the  child  of  air  who 
played  once  in  such  a  garden;  grown  into  duller  estate,  he  has 
plodded  away,  but,  O  happy  miracle!  the  wraith  of  him  lives 
on  in  that  garden  forever.  Indeed,  it  is  possible  to  go  further 
and  find  this  no  individual  journal,  but  the  record  of  childhood 
itself;  and  it  thrills  the  heart  piercingly  to  see  the  greatness  and 
littleness  of  the  mind  new  to  earth  so  truly  illuminated.  Listen 
to  the  piping  voice:  — 

*«  The  world  is  so  full  of  a  number  of  things, 
I  am  sure  we  should  all  be  as  happy  as  kings." 

Note  the  vastness  of  the  wonder,  the  expression  falling  like  a 
stick  through  pure  impotence  of  equipment!  Ideas  hover  over 
him  like  a  cloud,  but  like  a  cloud,  he  may  not  grasp  them;  weak 
of  vision,  new  sights  loom  up  before  him  portentously  beautiful, 
awful  beyond  thought,  and  he,  the  unpractised  of  tongue,  may 
not  yet  paint  their  seeming.  Those  two  bald  lines  are  a  child's 
version  of 

**  The  cloud-capp'd  towers,  the  gorgeous  palaces. 
The  solemn  temples,  the  great  globe  itself." 

The  same  awe,  the  same  recognition  of  majesty!  but  the  poor 
baby  fumbles  for  expression  as  doubtless  Shakespeare  did,  find- 
ing even  his  vast  words  all  inadequate  for  that  comprehensive 
vision. 

To  play  in  the  Garden  with  Stevenson  is  to  know  him  at  six 
years  old  even  a  little  better  than  through  his  later  confidence. 
This  was  truly  a  JVu?iderkindy  a  child  of  dreams  and  fantasy. 
All  his  visions  were  hot  and  sweeping;  day  by  day,  with  the 
careless  strength  of  power,  he  created  for  himself  new  worlds  to 
eke  out  the  insufficiency  of  this  one  little  sphere.  Lying  in  bed, 
a  luxurious  Jove,  he  overlooked  '*  the  pleasant  land  of  counter- 
pane," and  worked  his  magic  there.  What  visions  had  he  of 
ships  in  fleets,  of  cities  builded  by  a  wish  !  Here  alone  did 
Rome  rise  in  a  day,  and  Carthage  sprang  aloft  unbargained  for. 
The  whole  world  was  all  too  small  for  his  imagining;  its  farthest 
bound  was  like  the  narrow  seas  to  Francis  Drake,     In  youth, 

29 


as  in  his  prime,  it  was  ever  **I  should  like  to  rise  and  go.** 
The  soul  thus  early  shod  itself  with  purpose,  and  staff  in  hand, 
arose  to  travel  bravely.  No  choosing  of  next-door  orchards  or 
pleasant  fields  near-by;  nothing  will  suit  him  short  of  Babylon 
or  El  Dorado.  But  alas  for  childhood's  prison-rules,  real  as  the 
bonds  of  age  !  for  all  adventure  ends  at  bed-time,  that  **long 
black  passage,'*  and  rising  is  not  wholly  to  see  the  sunrise,  but 
to  lace  your  shoes.  Still,  spite  of  the  jealous  real,  he  stayed 
there  as  his  childish  state  decreed,  and  like  the  Lady  in  her 
tov/er,  saw  life  go  by  him  all  imagined,  quite  unproved.  Like 
her,  too,  he  saw  the  shadows  in  the  glass  ;  for  always  the 
child  is  wondering  **  where  go  the  boats?"  questioning  the 
**wind  a-blowing  all  day  long,"  brooding  over  the  armies 
marching  in  the  embers  and  the  burning  city  crumbling  black. 
He  would  fain  have  lived  through  the  summer  of  the  little  toy 
soldier,  buried  in  the  garden.  (How  like  the  man  Louis! 
Ever  the  peerer  into  mystery,  the  greedy  over  fairy  bread!) 
But  never  mind  I  there  are  compensations  to  a  Wunderkind  as  to 
no  other,  he  whose  mind  is  the  real  kingdom  and  other  worlds 
but  subject  provinces  ;  for  he  can  multiply  joys  to  wondrous 
issues  by  this  same  alchemy  of  the  fancy.  He,  fine-eyed  and 
sharp  of  ear,  knows  w^hat  realm  on  realm  lie  invisible  in  the 
common  garden-ground,  where  Uncle  Jim,  grown-up  and  dull 
and  knowing  no  better,  smokes  his  pipe  in  leaden  security, 
thinking  he  treads  a  common  earth,  dedicate  only  to  the  growing 
of  cabbage.  The  worlds  are  there  and  Louis  has  made  them; 
with  a  turn  of  the  hand,  he  can  make  you  more. 

When  jewels  shine  so  clear,  what  eye  shall  choose  ?  Yet  if  we 
must  own  but  one,  let  it  be  My  Treasures,  too  perfect  not  to  be 
learned  and  quoted  : 

*'  These  nuts,  that  I  keep  in  the  back  of  the  nest 
Where  all  my  lead  soldiers  are  lying  at  rest. 
Were  gathered  in  autumn  by  nursie  and  me 
In  a  wood  with  a  well  by  the  side  of  the  sea. 

This  whistle  we  made  (and  how  clearly  it  sounds!) 
By  the  side  of  a  field  at  the  end  of  the  grounds. 
Of  a  branch  of  a  plane,  with  a  knife  of  my  own. 
It  was  nursie  who  made  it,  and  nursie  alone! 

The  stone,  with  the  white  and  the  yellow  and  grey. 
We  discovered  I  cannot  tell  how  far  away; 

30 


And  I  carried  it  back  although  weary  and  cold. 
For  though  father  denies  it,  I'm  sure  it  is  gold. 

But  of  all  of  my  treasures  the  last  is  the  king. 
For  there's  very  few  children  possess  such  a  thing; 
And  that  is  a  chisel,  both  handle  and  blade. 
Which  a  man  who  was  really  a  carpenter  made.'* 

Here,  clad  in  honest  fustian,  is  the  pathos  of  a  little  soul's  pos- 
sessing; so  small,  so  poor,  and  still  so  like  our  own  maturer 
worship  of  treasure  all  as  vain  that  the  common  pain  of  life 
■  blows  bitingly  in  upon  us  while  we  read.  That  not  unalloyed 
content  roused  within  us  by  the  feeble  majesty  of  childhood 
clutches  at  the  throat;  the  twinge  that  is  ever  the  partner  of  a 
yearning  love  comes  upon  us,  prompting  the  heart  to  comfort, 
the  arms  to  open  wide.  Something  of  the  same  piercing  quality 
is  in  Coventry  Patmore's  remorseful  lines.  The  Toys.  But 
there  the  pathos,  being  so  palpably  **an  assault  upon  the  feel- 
ings," can  be  borne;  My  Treasures  exists,  not  that  you  may 
spin  a  moral,  but  only  that  you  may  remember  the  contentment 
of  youth. 

Stevenson,  the  story-teller,  is  secure  of  praise.  For  though 
ultimate  criticism  will  inevitably  point,  for  his  monument,  to 
the  essays  and  descriptive  prose,  the  lover  of  hearty  deeds 
will  still  disport  his  fancy  in  those  charmed  pages  of  adven- 
ture. Here  was  the  true  romantic,  who  chose  to  portray 
life,  not  as  it  is,  but  as  it  might  be  any  day  in  any  year;  life 
stuffed  full  of  virile  deeds,  —  sailing  the  sea,  striking  great  blows 
and  growing  lustily  thereby.  He  loved  to  feed  men  on  the  meat 
of  action,  to  heat  their  blood  red-hot,  and  move  them  with  the 
joy  and  knowledge  of  being.  This  was  the  choice  of  one  who 
had  never  lost  the  child  out  of  his  inmost  spirit.  Not  for  him 
was  the  middle-aged  yearning  over  dreams  obscured,  like  morning 
stars,  by  day's  full  splendor;  his  eyes  saw  ever  with  their  early 
clearness,  and  the  wisdom  of  his  prime  spoke  nowhere  more 
weightily  than  in  commending  a  serious  attitude  toward  happy 
make-believe.  **  Measure  tape  all  day  if  you  must,"  runs  the 
tune  of  his  implication,  '*but  at  sundown,  fall  to  graver  matters, 
and  come  out  to  play.  Very  possibly  you  have  no  ships  and 
islands  of  your  own,  but  I  can  spare  you  one  or  two.  Turn  a 
page,  and  you  find  them."  Living,  as  he  did,  within  that 
sanctuary  of  divine  insight  surrounded  by  the  glory-clouds  of 
youth,  he  saw  no  reason  why  as  good  a  game  should  not  be 

31 


played  on  the  open  sea  or  by  a  rigorous  coast,  as  behind  the 
sofa-backs  while  the  grown  folks  are  battering  away  at  their  own 
dull  device  of  talk.  He  extended  his  stage,  intensified  his 
motives,  and  the  thing  was  done.  The  king  of  romantics, 
there  was  one  choice  in  the  world  of  letters  to  which  his  ima- 
gination steadily  refused  to  lend  itself;  though  you  flayed  him, 
you  could  not  make  him  understand  why,  in  the  land  of  books, 
we  should  deliberately  prefer  to  be  dull;  nor  why,  for  our 
amusement,  we  should  repeat  the  dreary  routine  of  our  poor 
common  day,  when  we  might  tilt  on  a  Field  of  the  Cloth  of 
Gold,  with  kings  for  company,  were  they  but  the  kings  of 
roguery.  He  loved  **a  piece  of  purple";  he  would  have  it 
flaunted  for  sash  or  banner,  though  our  doublet  be  of  frieze. 
And  all  day  long,  he  heard  the  bird  of  the  ideal,  the  promiser 
of  joy  ineffable,  the  chorister  beside  the  altar  of  beauty,  singing 
before  him  in  the  darkling  woods. 

Remembering  his  comparison  of  Hugo,  Scott  and  Fielding, 
you  are  tempted  to  set  his  attainment  before  the  mirroring  of 
that  great  company,  seeking  especially  the  bonds  of  likeness  or 
difference  between  him  and  the  two  of  his  own  tongue.  Field- 
ing, said  he,  was  a  creator  of  men  and  women  warm  with  the 
vital  action  of  the  soul,  and  owing  no  whit  of  their  reality  to 
the  accessories  of  time  and  place.  He  saw  humanity  as  the 
playwright  sees  it,  against  a  background  broadly  indicated, 
suggestive  merely  of  life.  His  world  was  governed  by  indi- 
vidual interests  alone;  the  spirit  of  the  times  might  cry  ever 
so  loudly,  but  the  voice  of  his  puppets  struck  clearlier  on  the 
scanty  furnishing  of  his  mimic  stage.  Scott  was  the  exponent 
of  a  civilization  becoming  every  day  more  complex,  and  he 
imbibed  inevitably  that  sense  of  proportion  incidental  to  a  larger 
field;  he  learned  how  inextricably  individual  deeds  are  inter- 
woven with  what  we  are  pleased  to  call  great  events  merely 
because  we  see  them  in  the  aggregate.  At  last  it  had  become 
somewhat  important  to  the  romancer  that  Scotland  should  be 
shaken  by  war  or  turmoil,  for  individual  fortunes  were  thereby 
discomfited,  and  M.  and  N.  could  no  longer  love  or  strive,  un- 
conscious of  the  pother  o'er  their  heads.  Thus  did  the  epical 
hero  dwindle  to  the  actor  in  romance,  and  thenceforth  his  deeds 
were  decked  out  and  played  upon  by  a  rich  profusion  of  means 
unsought  by  the  robust  chronicler  who  led  the  way. 

Stevenson,  making  deliberate  choice  between  the  novel  of  in- 
cident and  the  novel  of  character,  left  the  intricacies  of  human 
32 


conduct  to  such  as  love  a  laboratory,  and  yawn  in  the  open  air. 
He  undoubtedly  wore  his  heirship  to  Scott  with  all  the  pride 
of  lineage.  It  seemed  peculiarly  the  heirship  of  kin,  for  each 
was  pure  story-teller  and  Scotland's  own.  But  the  prince,  be- 
come sovereign,  extended  his  realm  through  valor  waxing  great, 
and  bestowed  upon  it  a  transcending  power.  Not  only  inventor 
but  artist  to  the  finest  fibre,  he  carried  onsets  whither  Scott  never 
could  have  followed,  carving  deeds  with  impalpable  art  where 
the  other  hacked  and  hewed. 

If  Scott  marched  a  pace  in  advance  of  Fielding  in  the  selec- 
tion of  fitting  scenery  for  action,  Stevenson  was  far  removed 
from  both.  Places  were  continually  appealing  to  him  with  sug- 
gestions of  dead  and  gone  story,  or  beseeching  him  to  vivify  them 
with  deeds.  One,  the  Isle  of  Earraid,  had  so  insistent  a  hold 
on  his  imagination  that  it  would  not  leave  him  at  peace,  and  he 
might  not  rid  himself  of  the  clamorous  ghost  by  even  once  laying  it 
in  print.  There  he  *'put  a  whole  family,"  and  later  con- 
demned a  shivering  hero  to  exile  on  its  coast,  and  then  he 
must  fain  describe  it  again,  with  all  its  cloudy  moods  and  the 
vague  surmises  cropping  out  from  it,  like  weeds  upon  a  ruin. 
He  owns  the  fascination  fixed  upon  him  by  rocks  engirt  with 
pools  on  a  solitary  shore.  **  What  scenes  have  been  enacted 
there  ?  "  he  muses.  **  What  deeds  are  yet  to  spring  ?  "  With 
art's  painstaking  nicety,  he  selects  a  scene  ;  or,  it  may  be,  the 
scene  selects  him,  and  the  story  wills  of  its  own  strength  to  be 
written.  Conducted  thither,  you  never  quarrel  with  his  choice. 
The  solitary,  ramshackle  estate  of  Shaws,  in  Kidnapped,  the  boom- 
ing of  the  wave  in  Treasure  Island,  the  rock-begirt  isolation  in 
The  Merry  Men,  the  cosmic  loneliness  of  that  dazzling  stage 
where  hell  defied  high  heaven  in  The  Ebb-Tide,  —  once  there, 
the  narrative  seizes  hold  upon  you  before  its  pages  are  well  begun. 
This  is  the  attitude  of  the  pure  romancer,  aiming  first  and  always 
at  the  air  of  telling  a  story  as  it  really  was  ;  reproducing  the  very 
color  of  the  time,  making  you  hear  the  rote  of  the  sea  as  it 
dinned  itself  into  the  hero's  ear,  and  feel  how  cold,  and  wet 
and  weariness  washed  their  tints  upon  his  aching  flesh.  It  is  the 
noble,  primitive  idea  of  naked  narrative  ;  neither  rent  with 
analysis  nor  clouded  by  moral  polemics,  but  addressed  only  to  the 
hale  fancy  of  the  robuster  nature  within  us  all,  which  needs  only 
feeding  to  live.  It  is  the  sole  manner  of  invention  made  to 
send  a  story  singing  down  from  father  to  son,  from  bard  to  bard, 
in  the  old  melodic  days. 

33 


Like  every  sensitive,  fancy-driven  soul,  sick  to  death,  at 
times,  of  earth's  boding  and  horror,  Stevenson  has  learned 
every  lineament  in  the  face  of  fear,  loathsome  twin  brother  of 
danger  and  ministrant  to  the  grave.  And  as  menace  is  the  in- 
forming soul  of  romance,  so  fear  walks  beside  it,  and  poisons  the 
very  sky  with  fetid  breath.  In  the  more  transparent  art  of  com- 
mon workmen,  personal  adventures  crowd  in  series,  and  the 
narrator  retains  your  ear  by  piling  peril  upon  peril;  but  Steven- 
son craftily  heightens  the  apprehension  of  the  man  beset  by 
bodily  danger  through  superadding  a  secondary  fear,  born  of 
darkness  and  the  strange  places  of  the  earth.  That  breathless 
tale.  The  Pavilion  on  the  Links,  serves  well  for  sole  example  of 
such  cunning;  for  the  character  of  the  place,  augmenting  the 
emotions  of  the  hour,  as  in  The  Fall  of  the  House  of  Usher, 
goes  far  toward  working  the  reader  into  a  state  of  tension 
rendering  the  catastrophe  a  positive  relief.  **  Poison  or  pistol 
shot!  "  we  cry.  ''Only  deliver  us  from  the  body  of  this  un- 
seen death  !  " 

**  The  country,  I  have  said,  was  mixed  sand-hills  and  links; 
links  being  a  Scottish  name  for  sand  which  has  ceased  drifting 
and  become  more  or  less  solidly  covered  with  turf.  The 
pavilion  stood  on  an  even  space;  a  little  behind  it,  the  wood 
began  in  a  hedge  of  elders  huddled  together  by  the  wind;  in 
front,  a  few  tumbled  sand-hills  stood  between  it  and  the  sea. 
An  outcropping  of  rock  had  formed  a  bastion  for  the  sand,  so 
that  there  was  here  a  promontory  in  the  coast  line  between  two 
shallow  bays;  and  just  beyond  the  tides,  the  rock  again  cropped 
out  and  formed  an  islet  of  small  dimensions  but  strikingly 
designed.  The  quicksands  were  of  great  extent  at  low  water, 
and  had  an  infamous  reputation  in  the  country.  On  summer 
days,  the  outlook  was  bright  and  even  gladsome;  but  at  sun- 
down in  September,  with  a  high  wind  and  a  heavy  surf  rolling 
in  close  along  the  links,  the  place  told  of  nothing  but  dead 
mariners  and  sea  disasters.  A  ship  beating  to  windward  on  the 
horizon,  and  a  huge  truncheon  of  wreck  half  buried  in  the 
sands  at  my  feet,  completed  the  innuendo  of  the  scene.  .  .  . 
The  place  had  an  air  of  solitude  that  daunted  even  a  solitary  like 
myself." 

That  is  the  phrase,  **  the  innuendo  of  the  scene"!  He 
forces  you  to  hear  and  taste  it,  even  as  it  lies  upon  his  own  tongue 
and  within  his  ears;  so  that  when  the  men  step  outside  into  that 
stillness    ** unbroken    save  by  the   sea-gulls   and   the  surf,"  and 

34 


where  a  hundred  men  might  have  lain  upon  the  sand  in  ambush, 
you  feel  with  them  their  sheer  inability  to  bide  the  horror  of 
inaction  ;  you  yield  with  them  to  fear,  and  in  your  heart  pas- 
sionately adjure  them  to  rush  back  under  cover  before  it  shall  be 
too  late.  Suspense,  that  other  handmaid  of  thrilling  narrative, 
is  ever  under  his  thumb,  and  he  holds  her  secrets  inviolable. 
No  sooner  do  you  begin  a  tale  than  you  are  set  midway  on  the 
track  of  expectation,  destined  often  to  fall  into  the  positive  ex- 
citement of  pure  scare,  before  curiosity  comes  near  to  being 
satisfied.  Like  his  own  treasure-seekers,  we  go  on,  stumbling 
and  prying,  with  now  and  then  an  assault  of  alarm,  and  only 
draw  breath  again  when  the  ship  is  in  port,  and  we,  poor 
mariners  !  our  secret  at  last  in  the  hand,  can  sit  down  and  talk  it 
over.  Notably  in  The  Strange  Case  of  Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde, 
the  suspense  is  preserved  and  intensified  until  it  becomes  actually 
hysterical.  To  wait  with  the  narrator  while  the  Thing  within 
goes  raging  up  and  down,  to  wonder  what  formless  birth  of 
darkness  It  may  be,  is  to  slip  back  into  child-land  and  relive  one 
of  those  moments  when  the  bogie  hides  behind  the  door,  fateful 
and  supperless.  Indeed,  so  well  has  the  secret  been  kept,  the 
while  he  thrums  our  tortured  nerves,  that  we  are  sadly  conscious 
of  a  downfall  at  the  end  ;  for  even  a  partisan,  Stevenson-mad, 
could  scarcely  deny  that  the  somewhat  material  solution  of  the 
drug  oversteps  the  bathos  of  disclosure.  But  no  mention  of 
Jekyll  and  Hyde  shall  henceforth  be  complete  without  the  com- 
ment of  John  Addington  Sy*nonds,  a  familiar  bit  of  criticism  set 
forth  in  a  personal  letter,  and  striking  so  true  an  ethical  note  as 
virtually  to  close  the  subject. 

**.  .  .  I  am  trembling  under  the  magician's  wand  of  your 
fancy,  and  rebelling  against  it  with  the  scorn  of  a  soul  that  hates  to 
be  contaminated  with  the  mere  picture  of  victorious  evil.  Our 
only  chance  seems  to  me  to  be  to  maintain,  against  all  appear- 
ances, that  evil  can  never  and  in  no  way  be  victorious.  .  .  The 
suicide  end  of  Dr.  Jekyll  is  too  commonplace.  Dr.  Jekyll 
ought  to  have  given  Mr.  Hyde  up  to  justice.  This  would  have 
vindicated  the  sense  of  human  dignity  which  is  so  horribly  out- 
raged in  your  book." 

No  work  of  Stevenson's  can  be  so  harshly  criticised  from  the 
artistic  side,  none  so  keenly  questioned.  It  startles  by  its  power, 
it  revolts  through  its  crudity.  So  ought  we  to  see  the  miry  deeps 
in  man,  but  not  in  such  a  fashion,  like  viscera  disclosed  by 
butchery.      The  fancy  labored  here;  the  practised  hand  shook  and 

35 


fumbled.  One  passage  only  recalls  the  master  at  his  best,  a  para- 
graph so  great  with  the  birth  of  a  formless  horror  that  it  clamors 
for  remembrance  : 

**  He  had  now  seen  the  full  deformity  of  that  Creature  that 
shared  with  him  some  of  the  phenomena  of  consciousness,  and 
was  co-heir  with  him  to  death  ;  and  beyond  these  links  of  com- 
munity, which  in  themselves  made  the  most  poignant  part  of  his 
distress,  he  thought  of  Hyde,  for  all  his  energy  of  life,  as  of 
something  not  only  hellish  but  inorganic.  This  was  the  shock- 
ing thing  ;  that  the  slime  of  the  pit  seemed  to  utter  cries  and 
voices  ;  that  the  amorphous  dust  gesticulated  and  sinned  ;  that 
what  was  dead,  and  had  no  shape,  should  usurp  the  offices  of 
life.  And  this  again,  that  the  insurgent  horror  was  knit  to  him 
closer  than  a  wife,  closer  than  an  eye ;  lay  caged  in  his  flesh, 
where  he  heard  it  mutter  and  felt  it  struggle  to  be  born  ;  at 
every  hour  of  weakness,  and  in  the  confidence  of  slumber,  pre- 
vailed against  him,  and  deposed  him   out  of  life." 

The  secret  forming  the  germ  of  Olalla  and  The  Merry  Men 
is  kept  with  the  same  provocative  assumption  of  a  secret  to  keep. 
**  You  are  in  suspense?  Well  you  may  be,"  nods  the  sage  roman- 
cer. **  There's  pippins  and  cheese  to  come  !  "  In  the  case  of 
Treasure  Island,  it  is  remotely  possible  that  the  veteran  reader, 
the  old  hand  at  a  yarn,  may  at  once  suspect  Ben  Gunn  of  having 
been  cast  for  the  part  of  Deus  ex  Machina,  and  only  waiting  for 
his  cue  ;  but  what  wiseacre  is  prepared  for  the  manner  of  his 
errantry  ?  When  the  map  is  delivered  over  to  Long  John,  few 
among  us  are  so  dull  as  not  to  smell  an  ulterior  purpose  under 
such  engaging  courtesy;  but  name  it  we  cannot.  Like  Silver  him- 
self, we  are  the  fool  of  circumstance,  and  though  with  him  we 
approach  the  fateful  spot  in  baffling  surmise  of  a  trick,  do  we 
dream  of  finding  the  treasure  gone  ?  Not  for  a  moment,  and 
we  shout  our  bravos  in  an  ecstasy  unfeigned  as  our  relief.  Even 
Long  John  himself  has  his  hour  for  mocking  at  curiosity,  and 
reveals  himself  at  a  blow.  Possibly  his  elaborate  cloaking  of 
guileless  bonhomie  should  have  taught  us  to  find  him  hollow, 
like  the  hillwives,  a  crust  of  guilt  ;  but  when  Stevenson  throws 
us  into  a  state  of  hypnotic  belief,  we  go  patiently  on,  led  by  the 
nose,  ready  to  see  black  and  white  as  God  made  them  only 
when  our  magician  releases  us,  and  not  before. 

In  working  the  element  of  fear,  he  depends  not  only  upon 
natural  causes  and  the  great  psychical  influences  transcending 
them,  but  upon  means  so  slight  yet  so  craftily  chosen  as  to  simu- 

36 


late  a  legitimate  trickery.  Through  touches  almost  unnoted  at 
the  time,  a  reiterated  note  like  the  warning  music  in  melodrama, 
he  wakens  you  to  a  nervous  expectancy  relative  to  some  one  per- 
son or  thing.  Long  John  has  all  the  mysterious  horror  born 
of  that  strange  wedding  of  his  suavity  of  mannec  and  deformity 
of  soul,  and  you  fear  him  as  you  do  hell-pains  ;  but  it  is  the 
tapping  of  his  crutch  that  really  daunts  you.  Listening  for  it  until 
silence  feeds  the  aching  of  suspense,  when  it  does  actually  strike 
upon  the  ear  you  are  all  agog  lest,  with  the  terrible  omnipotence 
of  evil,  he  hobble  nimbly  out  of  the  book,  and  appear  in  awful 
person.  The  tapping  of  the  blind  man's  stick  is  enough  to 
appall  the  stoutest  heart ;  and  awaiting  it  with  Jim  and  his 
mother  in  the  dusk,  you  are  tempted  to  bid  them  balk  Mr.  Steven- 
son of  his  purpose,  let  the  story  go  unfinished,  and  flee  the  house, 
leaving  its  treasure  to  pirates  or  the  devil,  and  us  within  the  sound 
of  Sabbath-bells  forever.  The  veiled  leper  of  The  Black  Arrow, 
ringing  his  bell  through  the  forest,  on  evil  bent,  is  born  to  terrify 
us  quite  as  indubitably  as  Dick  and  Joan  are  moved,  and  that  by 
no  means  because  the  text  gives  us  terror  as  their  cue.  He  is 
the  pizzicato  of  the  violins,  sounding  uncertainty  and  the  super- 
natural. 

The  primal  motives  are  strongest,  the  best  stories  old  as  the 
sun.  Nothing  can  be  better  than  the  best,  and  Stevenson,  with 
the  fine  impartiality  of  the  great,  wasted  no  time  in  searching 
about  him  for  a  fictitious  originality.  He  took  the  strong,  sim- 
ple emotions  as  he  found  them,  unhewn  in  immemorial  quarries, 
and  wrought  them  into  life.  From  furthest  time  there  has 
been  no  better  furnishing  discovered  for  the  story  of  adventure 
than  hidden  treasure,  family  feud,  sea-fighting,  the  shifts  of  a 
castaway,  the  unthinking  comradeship  of  hero  and  heroine  before 
yet  they  are  "a  lover  and  his  lass."  But  ever  old,  they  emerge 
from  his  hands  minted  anew  ;  his  scenes  are  fresh  as  to-morrow's 
sunrise,  and  the  men  who  move  there  breathe  and  walk.  An 
involved  xrharacter-study  has  no  more  legitimate  place  in  the 
novel  of  adventure  than  fine  lace  upon  armor  ;  but  character  it- 
self strives  manfully  there.  Your  hero  strikes  his  true  impact 
upon  the  mind,  but  the  moving  pageant  of  events  simply  will  not 
let  you  sit  down  to  examine  his  soul-tissues  under  a  glass.  For 
all  that,  he  shows  a  no  less  solid  bulk  in  the  bright,  broad  sun- 
shine of  his  deeds.  Bad  and  good,  Stevenson's  men  are  tangible 
as  the  earth.  Nobody  shall  henceforth  win  more  true  fealty 
than  Jim  Hawkins,  in  very  spite  of  his  infirmities  ;   for  Jim,  with 

37 


all  his  gift  of  taking  fortune  at  the  flood,  had  a  slovenly  habit  of 
obedience,  and  rode  serenely  over  the  heads  of  penalties.  To 
us  fogies  who  cling  unreservedly  to  the  traditions  of  lavv^  and 
order,  he  would  have  been  gey  ill  to  live  wi'.  Nevertheless  we 
love  him,  for  that  he  is  a  boy,  built  on  the  old,  old  lines  adored 
by  other  boys  since  the  day  when  Probably  Arboreal  began  to 
count  the  gray  hairs  on  his  poll,  and  tell  his  tales  of  a  grand- 
father. He  is  such  a  hero  as  boys  themselves  might  have  drawn, 
though  not  one  of  them  could  have  resisted  thi  temptation  to 
multiply  his  fine  qualities  and  set  them  all  over  him  like  prickles 
on  a  burr,  destined  to  hold  you  while  they  irritate.  Multi- 
tudes are  bold,  but  who,  bethink  you,  stands  forth  so  finely 
fortunate  ?  He  had  a  star,  and  no  book  so  lucky  as  to  coax  him 
for  a  stroll  into  its  pages  could  thenceforth  exist  without  him. 
He  is  the  living  exponent  of  that  belief  lying  warm  at  the  hearts 
of  all,  and  carefully  concealed,  lest  we  be  deposed  from  our 
middle-aged  eminence,  that  youth,  after  all,  is  the  thing;  and 
even  its  errors  turn  to  the  general  good. 

Long  John  Silver  is  real  as  was  Beelzebub  to  a  mediaeval 
mind,  and  every  Luther  of  us  is  ready  to  cast  the  first  ink-bottle. 
David  Balfour,  that  pawky  chiel,  had  more  than  a  touch  of 
**the  shorter  catechist";  a  clumsy  chivalry  and  little  humor, 
poor  laddie  !  and  I  fear  much  that  after  the  sad  example  of 
that  gallant  Barbara  Grant,  we  flout  him  while  we  love.  How 
innocently  does  he  lay  his  harmless  foibles  bare  !  Never  was 
autobiography  so  truly  self-betrayal.  Said  the  Lord  Advocate, 
**I  have  a  respect  for  you,  Mr.  David,  mingled  with  awe." 
So  have  we  all  ! 

But  Alan  Breck  !  here  something  leaps  in  and  stays  the  pen, 
lest  it  run  to  justice  and  not  all  to  praise.  The  very  glance  of 
him  wins  the  heart  at  a  bound  ;  — 

**His  eyes  were  unusually  light,  and  had  a  kind  of  dancing 
madness  in  them,  that  was  both  engaging  and  charming." 

Most  vain,  most  brave,  the  henchman  of  that  dancing  devil  in 
the  eye,  a  boaster  of  his  prowess,  a  braggart  over  his  left-handed 
birth,  simple  as  a  child  in  friendship,  loyal  as  a  dog,  honest, 
like  all  true  artists,  when  it  came  to  the  supremacy  of  the  pipes  ; 
best  of  all,  inspired  singer  of  The  Song  of  the  Sword  of  Alan. 
Curiously  complex,  yet  obviously  direct,  a  product  of  the  Scottish 
nature  and  the  romance-breeding  time,  who  shall  find  his  equal  ? 
Who  is  not  still  aggrieved  that  he  enters  so  charily  into  the  later 
fortunes  of  David  Balfour  ? 
38 


Enumeration  tires  over  the  illuminated  list  of  this  warm, 
thronging  company.  Sea-captains,  diverse  in  headstrong  force, 
and  often  enough  diverse  in  crime  ;  Jim  Pinkerton,  crass 
product  of  no  age  but  ours,  soldier  of  financial  fortune,  abor- 
tive millionaire,  and  yet,  spite  of  his  blatant,  open-mouthed 
inadequacy,  invincibly  attractive  ;  Loudon  Dodd's  grand- 
father, that  mossy  grasshopper  piping  from  among  the 
tombs  ;  Mr.  Whish,  the  most  frightful  inorganic  embodiment 
of  vice,  ignorance  and  blasphemy  ever  conceived  by  mind  of 
man  ;  and  Attwater,  truly  religious,  truly  fanatical,  and  cruel  as 
death,  because  he  dared  relegate  to  himself  the  attribute  of  Al- 
mighty God,  and  judge  where  judgment  faileth.  There  you 
have  them  in  little,  a  sample  of  the  king's  gallery. 

In  one  book  only  does  the  actual  development  of  character  and 
motive  outstrip  the  movement  of  plot  ;  that  dark  drama  of  fra- 
ternal feud.  The  Master  of  Ballantrae.  Treasure  Island  holds 
the  mind  entranced  like  the  Ancient  Mariner's  glittering  eye. 
Kidnapped  exhilarates  with  adventure  so  pure  that  there's  not  a 
headache  in  a  cask  of  it  ;  but  The  Master  is  informed  by  a  hu- 
man, ethical  value  to  which  they  never  aspire.  The  dramatis 
perso?ic:s  might  almost  be  cut  down  to  three,  the  two  brothers  and 
the  canny,  stupid,  brave,  cowardly  old  house-dog  of  a  steward, 
who  tells  the  tale  and  depicts  himself  so  excellently  in  the  tell- 
ing. My  lady,  though  prime  motive  in  the  machinery,  is  none 
so  vivid  as  the  men  she  sways.  A  thrilling  reality  touches  the 
the  story,  in  part  because  it  is  given  out  of  the  mouth  of  more 
than  one  witness,  and  carefully  edited  by  foot-notes  (a  device  al- 
ways calculated  to  give  a  ring  of  authenticity),  but  on  higher 
grounds  through  the  Nemesis  of  character,  growing  and  swelling 
into  the  Nemesis  of  act. 

It  is  impossible  to  weigh  the  book  without  remembering  one 
stern  stricture  of  Stevenson's  in  his  essay  on  Burns;  approval  of 
the  fiat  that  a  virtuous  act  is  not  necessarily  followed  by  a  for- 
tunate result.  The  universe  is  not  to  be  set  right  by  a  half-hour's 
soldering.  Burns,  in  his  palsied  striving  after  some  compensat- 
ing good  for  the  evil  he  sowed  and  tended,  married  the 
woman  he  had  wronged  ;  yet  the  evil  kept  on  flourishing  until  it 
choked  his  very  breath.  So  in  The  Master  a  love  of  strict,  ap- 
parent justice  rebels  that  the  brother  who  had  suffered  all  things 
at  the  hands  of  his  evil  genius,  until  his  reason  was  actually 
shaken,  should  perish  in  the  same  disaster  that  overwhelmed  the 
devil  who  set  him  beside  himself,  and  was  morally  responsible  for 

39 


his  deeds.  But  Stevenson  knows  how  truly  poetic  justice  is  the 
justice  of  the  study,  not  of  God.  Certain  deeds  bring  about 
certain  mathematical  results;  though  you  be  thrown  thither,  you 
shall  not  enter  fraternal  warfare  and  escape  unsmirched.  Though 
Abel  may  have  scratched  you  into  madness  with  a  poison  root, 
yet  if  you  do  the  act  of  Cain,  you  shall  surely  die.  There  are 
deeds  born  only  to  end  in  doom,  and  though  goodness  become 
evil  through  no  responsibility  of  its  own,  since  it  is  evil  it  shall 
not  escape.  A  house  divided  against  itself  shall  fall,  and  even  he 
at  whose  door  the  measure  of  blame  lies  lightest,  shall  betake  him- 
self to  safety  in  time,  lest  his  flight  be  vain. 

The  world  *' will  still  be  talking"  because  Stevenson  so 
rigorously  excluded  women-folk  from  his  tales.  Even  when  he 
admits  them,  it  is  apparently  from  a  species  of  courtesy,  a 
deference  to  tradition.  One  looks  to  see  them  humiliatingly 
conscious  that  he  could  have  set  his  scene  without  their  bungling 
aid.  Quite  evidently  he  is  a  boy  who  has  no  mind  to  play 
with  girls.  They  are  somewhat  in  the  way.  He  is  absorbingly 
satisfied  with  games  made  up  of  guns  and  boats,  and  in  such 
matters  girls  may  not  meddle  too  boldly,  lest  they  unsex  them 
quite.  Though  love  be  supremest  factor  of  deeds,  he  needs  it 
not.  He  finds  dragon-killing  sufficiently  exhilarating,  though 
Andromeda  sit  at  home,  safe  at  her  tambour-frame.  But  reasons 
multiply;  suggestions  grow  in  clouds.  He  is  too  critically  wise 
not  to  realize  that  when  his  puppets  do  up  their  hair  and  put 
on  petticoats,  the  wires  work  rustily.  The  Lady  of  Ballantrae 
is  pure  feminine  as  Lady  Esmond,  patient  and  uncomplaining, 
but  she  is  an  abstract  of  virtue  and  not  its  living  body.  Joanna 
Sedley's  sole  touch  of  nature  lies  in  that  one  frank  outburst  when 
she  repudiates  her  boy's  clothes  because  they  did  not  fit,  and 
Otto's  Princess  belongs  rather  to  the  romance  of  fairydom  than 
the  courts  of  this  civilized  world.  Catriona  does,  at  times,  promise 
to  show  herself  a  real  girl,  warmly  human  when  she  creeps  under 
your  plaidie,  and  with  much  heroic  mettle  in  her;  but  even  she's 
scarce  **  remembered  on  warm  and  cold  days."  Only  Barbara 
Grant  quite  rouses  the  heart,  but  she  is  no  more  than  a  gallant  lad 
born  for  the  Forest  of  Arden  or  some  merry  outlawry,  *^  chasing 
the  red  deer  and  following  the  roe."  No,  it  is  useless  to  turn  the 
fact,  or  mouth  it  in  the  telling;  from  that  rich  and  magic  scrip  of 
his,  the  gods  omitted  the  one  little  key  to  the  feminine  heart.  Pos- 
sibly he  fails  to  emulate  Meredith's  portraiture,  because  he  lacks 
Meredith's  partisanship.  The  feminine  spirit,  fostering,  intui- 
40 


tive  in  sympathy,  draws  and  holds  him;  he  dreams  of  womanly 
comradeship,  even  in  wood-solitude,  its  welcome  at  his  journey's 
end;  but  the  very  complexity  of  the  nature  for  whose  rich  dowry 
he  longed,  might,  when  it  came  to  portrayal,  have  warded  away 
his  own  too-similar  spirit.  Praise  becomes  golden  when  crown- 
ing a  manly  man  with  the  highest  attributes  among  those  broadly 
classified  as  feminine;  as  the  tenderest  woman  becomes  all  the 
rarer  having  drunk  in  manly  virtues.  When  each  partakes  of  the 
other's  best,  then  are  both  nearer  God's  image  than  any  creature 
yet  conceived.  Stevenson  had  all  the  complexity  of  make-up 
ordinarily  accorded  womankind,  her  special  lustre  superadded  to 
his  own  birthright  of  courage,  honor  and  truth;  and  in  style, 
plot,  character-drawing,  even  in  formulated  religion,  he  took  ref- 
uge, through  the  attraction  of  difference,  in  the  simple  and  the  free. 
Moreover,  woman  is  not  only  complex,  but  she  is  more  artificial 
than  man,  more  closely  fettered  by  the  restraints  of  traditionary 
law.  More  dramatic  than  he,  she  not  only  becomes  what  nature 
made  her,  and  what  she  would  fain  make  herself,  but  also  what 
man  expects  her  to  be.  But  Stevenson  loved  to  paint  souls  that 
live  near  the  heart  of  things,  and  who,  bad  or  good,  are  gov- 
erned, not  by  acquired  morality  but  by  the  great  primal  springs 
of  action.  He  had  no  space  for  her  who  veers  and  tacks  with 
wandering  breezes;  his  ship  must  sail  straight  on  under  the 
sweeping  wind  of  elemental  passion  though  to  the  gulf  beneath. 

Who  ever  threw  his  gold  about  so  lavishly,  or  cast  his  spell 
abroad  and  gilded  all  he  touched  ?  Was  there  ever  such  errant 
flitting  from  wood  to  vale,  over  the  fence  and  back  again  ? 
Sometimes,  when  the  eye  roves  over  the  entire  field  of  his  achieve- 
ment, his  art  seems  tentative,  the  quicksilver  brain  not  yet  de- 
cided whither  to  run,  the  hand  unfettered  by  devotion  to  one 
form.  Heaven-tongued  essayist,  poet  and  playwright,  the  prodi- 
gal soul  yet  spent  itself  most  lavishly  in  many-hued  romance. 
And  what  a  range  is  there  !  For  this  man,  who  knew  the  road 
to  wild  adventure,  could  set  down  the  pure  unreality  of  that  syl- 
van visioning,  Prince  Otto;  the  haunting  prose  idyl.  Will  o'  the 
Mill;  those  modern  floutings  of  probability.  The  New  Arabian 
Nights,  with  their  excellent  hocus-pocus;  the  farcical  joking  of 
The  Wrong  Box;  the  ethical  beauty  of  Markheim;  the  crystal- 
lized horror  of  Thrawn  Janet,  and  to  step  outside  romance,  the 
terse,  humane  appeal  in  the  Footnote  to  History,  and  the  vitriol 
etching  of  the  letter  to  the  Reverend  Doctor  Hyde.  The  Letter 
has  a  double   value.      In   that  swift   rebuking,  he  takes  up  arms 

41 


for  another  and  in  the  act  again  reveals  himself.  His  justice 
spits  a  scornful  concession,  yet  is  it  justice  still.  Father 
Damien  was  dirty;  he  owns  it.  But,  oh,  sacred  ministry  of 
love  !  to-day,  "  there  is  not  a  clean  cup  or  towel  in  the  Bishop- 
Home,  but  dirty  Damien  washed  it."  These  pages,  overrun  by 
the  fire  of  scorching  justice,  still  are  burning,  and  will  burn  ;  they 
only  need  one  commentary,  —  Stevenson's  own  conclusion  to 
his  interpretation  of  Christ's  teaching  to  accept  and  pardon  all: 
''But  when  another's  face  is  buffeted,  perhaps  a  little  of  the  lion 
will  become  us  best."  And  still  remains  the  delicate,  sweetly- 
whimsical  Travels  with  a  Donkey,  and  that  treasury  of  English, 
Across  the  Plains,  full  of  life  and  light  and  color,  and  sternly 
uncomplaining  as  a  soldier's  journal.  Verily,  all  art  is  one,  the 
service  of  truth  and  beauty;  and  the  man  imbued  with  her  great 
spirit  shall  penetrate  her  many  gates. 

According  to  Stevenson's  own  confession,  the  Brownies  who 
set  his  scene  and  acted  the  dramas  he  afterwards  elaborated 
for  print,  were  absolutely  unmoral,  and  he  was  obliged  to  put  in 
the  morality,  "such  as  it  is."  But  very  little  is  put  in,  and 
that  of  the  simplest  sort  ;  black  and  white,  not  grays.  Let  it  be 
understood  that  he  who  reads  the  novels  without  reference  to 
the  essays  and  descriptive  prose  does  not  know  the  temper  of 
Stevenson,  the  man,  and  will  be  apt  to  call  him  a  cool-blooded 
pagan,  not  sneering  at  evil,  but  holding  to  a  deadly  indifference. 
But  read  with  such  fine  commentary,  you  see  him  what  he 
is,  the  impartial  chronicler,  looking  with  large  clear  gaze  on  all 
the  creatures  God  has  made,  selecting  such  as  fit  his  scene,  and 
assembling  them  there,  neither  extenuating  nor  setting  down 
aught  in  malice.  Such  as  they  are,  they  are.  It  is  his  business 
to  write  novels,  not  sermons.  Only  if  you  be  of  those  who 
find  their  sermons  on  the  roadway  of  life,  you  may  read  them 
here,  though  they  shall  neither  be  intoned  for  yo.u  nor  blazoned 
upon  the  wall.  No  man  save  Thomas  Hardy  equals  him  in  this 
candid  photography,  and  with  Hardy  it  is  impossible  not  to 
suspect  at  times  the  cynic  smile.  Stevenson  remains  ever  the 
serious,  faithful  scribe,  the  man  who  shrinks  from  judgment  and 
walks  in  compassion. 

Now,  in  the  hidden  ways  of  life,  the  moods  and  longings  of 
that  inner  sanctuary  where  the  soul  sitteth  alone,  what  manner 
of  man  was  this  who  lived  among  us,  the  uncomplaining  target 
of  fate,  and  joy's  chief  ministrant .?  First  of  all,  a  gypsy,  with 
errant  longings  all  keyed  to  the  tune  of  "Over  the  Hills  and  Far 


42 


Away,'*  a  heart  fixed  upon  the  pleasures  of  the  road.  A  tree 
sets  him  tingling  with  delight,  and  he  is  never  done  describing  a 
river.  The  living  and  growing  are  brothers  of  one  birth  with 
him,  and  breathing  their  air,  he  waxes  strong  and  mounts  into 
ampler  regions  of  being.  A  wood  he  finds  entrancing ;  he 
adores  its  dignified  seclusion,  its  way  of  seeking  the  heart  of  life 
through  its  rich  existence  of  boughs  in  the  air  we  never  inhabit, 
and  the  untracked  wandering  of  the  roots.  Bounded  in  place, 
yet  free  in  twig  and  filament,  drinking  from  a  hundred  springs 
never  tapped  by  man,  a  tree  is  strangely  akin  to  him,  for  he, 
too,  felt  the  check  of  mortality,  and  yet  grew  into  the  light 
and  spread  his  leafage  there.  But  perhaps  running  water  pleased 
him  best,  with  its  vital  relations  to  a  diversified  life,  its  dreamy 
wanderings  and  hurrying  plunge  into  the  strange  salt  sea.  His 
delight  was  in  praising  the  Oise,  whether,  in  the  Golden  Valley, 
it  fed  fat  pasture-lands  where  kine  browsed  and  patient,  dull 
little  donkeys  came  to  lip  the  happy  flood;  or  where,  nearer  the 
sea,  it  caught  at  the  banks  and  dragged  them  down  with  swirling 
might,  and  then  (grown  greater)  forgot  the  old  familiar  idyl 
upon  its  shores,  and  gave  itself  up  to  the  giant  egotism  of  trade. 
At  the  start,  in  that  canoeing  progress,  he  was  like  a  merry  spirit 
visited  by  those  clear-voiced  birds,  the  wandering  bells,  by 
wood-scents  and  good  earth  breezes;  at  its  close,  he  paddled 
mechanically,  alive  only  to  sense,  with  all  the  thinking  facul- 
ties in  abeyance.  He  was  very  near  the  heart  of  being,  near  as 
an  oak  tree  or  a  springing  fern,  and  with  little  trouble,  he  could 
speed  him  there  again;  for  one  free  hour  inspires  him  with 
ecstasy,  and  a  night  out  of  doors,  under  the  hollow  heaven,  re- 
constructs his  youth.  Urged  thus  by  gypsy  longings,  he  is  fired 
with  a  perpetual  discontent,  not  because  of  life  itself,  but  life  as 
we  have  agreed  to  make  it.  Our  asinine  conventions  turn  him 
sick,  but  his  medicine  is  the  sort  that  all  may  borrow;  give  him 

"  —  A  Loaf  of  Bread  beneath  the  Bough, 
A  Flask  of  Wine,  a  Book  of  Verse—  " 

**a  winding  road,  and  three  hours'  march  to  dinner,"  and  he 
asks  no  odds  of  emperors.  And  such  choosing  bespeaks,  louder 
than  trump  can  tell,  his  true  sanity  of  soul.  Out-door  air  re- 
vivifies like  the  water  of  life,  and  to  know  it  is  to  take  hold  on 
truth;  without  it,  men  are  become  —  but  let  Stevenson  phrase  it: 
**  Without  fresh  air,  you  only  require  a  bad  heart,  and  a  remark- 
able command  of  the  Queen's  English  to  become  such  another 

43 


as  Dean  Swift;  a  kind  of  leering,  human  goat,  leaping  and  wag- 
ging your  scut  on  mountains   of  offence." 

The  essays,  beyond  all  consideration  of  their  jewelled  phras- 
ing, belong  not  so  truly  to  his  art  as  to  his  gospel  of  deeds. 
Every  man's  life  is  a  daily  Credo'^  with  the  author,  every  word. 
Here  was  one  whose  foes  lived  within  his  very  citadel,  his  mortal 
habitation  a  ramshackle  palace  where  destroying  winds  swept  ever, 
unvisited  by  airs  of  calm.  Yet  the  indomitable  spirit  dwelt 
there  like  some  doomed  Ravenswood,  sworn  to  keep  his  former 
state;  or  as  a  princely  soul  vowed,  since  death  must  come,  to 
await  him  serene  and  royal  as  the  invading  horde  found  the 
Roman  Fathers,  dressed  in  their  robes  of  price  and  throned  on 
ivory  chairs.  Did  ever  man  shut  in  so  frail  a  tenement  so 
bravely  simulate  the  deeds  of  health  ?  This'  was  a  creature 
fitted  for  joy,  and  since  Joy  fled  him,  save  at  those  rare  moments 
when  he  slept  beneath  the  trees  and  made  his  tent  the  open  sky, 
he  was  fain  to  take  that  sterner  mistress  to  his  arms,  and  wed 
himself  to  Courage.  We  believe  too  little  now  in  the  miracle  of 
soul-sufficiency;  we  deify  the  flesh,  and  coming  into  life  ill- 
equipped,  we  whimper  when  we  do  not  curse.  But  for  him, 
necessity  was  laid  upon  him;  he  came  hither  to  dominate, 
though  in  the  midst  of  carnage. 

It  is  easy  to  conclude  that  one  other  strong  soul,  besides  the 
woman  who  loved  him,  stood  by  him,  soldierlike,  and  heartened 
him  for  war.  What  he  owed  the  half-dozen  friends  whose 
names  are  familiar  on  his  tongue,  as  well  as  what  he  gave  them, 
w^e  can  partly  guess;  but  something  deeper  clings  about  the  man 
who,  from  the  circle  of  ghastly  dreams  and  red  experiences, 
could  formulate  the  greatest  pagan  cry  of  modern  years: 

'*  Out  of  the  night  that  covers  me. 
Black  as  the  pit  from  pole  to  pole 
I  thank  whatever  gods  may  be 
For  my  unconquerable  soul." 

We  know,  of  inmost  necessity,  that  such  a  soul,  in  Steven- 
son's long  and  losing  battle  of  the  flesh,  must  have  been  one 
with  him  in  the  valor  pledged  to  withstand  the  shock  and  onset 
of  the  day. 

What  did  Stevenson  believe?  So  simple  a  system  of  morals  was 
never  more  simply  set  forth.  To  owe  no  man  anything,  paying 
scot  as  you  go;  to  consider  your  neighbor's  happiness;  to  live  cleanly 
and  honest;  to  do  no  scamp  work;  to  sing  loud  at  your  task,  and 

44 


moan,  if  you  must,  under  cover;  and  above  all,  to  obey :  the  creed  of 
the  soldier  and  the  gentleman.  To  him,  life  was  evidently,  in 
the  noblest  sense,  a  great  game  of  make-believe,  the  heroic 
blazonry  of  the  captain  who  stands  unblenching  on  the  bridge, 
knowing  the  fire  smoulders  below,  and  inwardly  sworn  to  ward 
off  panic  till  the  hour  of  help.  It  is  impossible  to  believe  that 
a  creature  so  exquisitely  organized  as  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  was 
not  sore  beset  by  the  nightmare  horrors  of  life;  the  shapeless 
fears  that  rise  at  our  side  and  clutch  at  us  with  impotent  though 
terrifying  hands.  But  with  knapsack  on  his  back,  he  marched 
with  jocund  step  straight  through  this  shadowy  valley,  his  eyes 
ever  seeking,  though  no  star  lit  up  the  dark,  his  purpose  fixed  in 
noble  acquiescence  on  that  unseen  goal  whither  we  all  are  thrust 
although  we  choose  it  not.  Some  of  us  go  stumbling,  pushed 
neck  and  crop  into  the  unknown;  he  walked  erect  and  proud, 
singing  the  song  of  joyance  as  he  strode.  In  the  light  of  such 
persistent  cheer,  Pulvis  et  Umbra,  the  one  dark  confession  of 
his  life,  girds  us  anew  for  the  fray.  For  through  its  very  gloom, 
he  proves  himself  a  man  like  as  we  are,  a  man  who  shrank  and 
then  trod  firmer  yet.  No  such  picture  exists  of  world-making 
and  destruction,  of  the  things  that  breed  and  die,  of  hand  to 
hand  conflict  doomed  always  to  end  in  dissolution.  The  strange- 
ness of  it  all,  and  stranger  still  that  man  should  strive!  That  he 
should  live  even  spasmodically  for  others,  should  struggle  to  be 
cleanly,  make  laws,  forego  delight!  Seen  in  despairing  mood, 
the  whole  scheme  becomes  a  hideous,  swarming  phantasm  of  life, 
breaking  every  instant  into  rotting  death.  Then  having  made 
that  most  tragic  avowal,  he  can  add: 

**  Let  it  be  enough  for  faith  that  the  whole  creation  groans  in 
mortal  frailty,  strives  witK unconquerable  constancy;  surely  not  all 
in  vain.'''* 

It  is  a  shallow  hopefulness  that  would  escape  the  vision  of 
decay.  **If  life  be  hard  for  such  resolute  and  pious  spirits,  it 
is  harder  still  for  us,  had  we  the  wit  to  understand  it."  But 
though  we  join  the  cry  of  lamentation,  we  must  in  honor  swell 
the  response  of  hope.  That  Stevenson  could  hold  up  his  head 
and  troll  his  careless  ditties  to  the  sun,  after  that  Miserere  of  the 
soul,  opens  the  mind  like  a  flower  to  the  possibilities  of 
human  regnancy.  One  man  has  looked  hell  in  the  face  and 
stayed  undaunted.  One  man  has  peered  over  the  gulf  where 
suns  are  swinging  and  unmade  stars  light  up  the  dusk,  and  yet 
retained   the   happy   sanity   of   our  common   life.      He   returned 

45 


from  his  Tartarean  journey  lifting  to  the  unseen  heaven  the  great, 
glad  cry  of  ultimate  obedience.  Therefore  will  we  not  despair, 
nor  wish  one  thorn  the  less  had  sprung  before  his  feet.  We  are 
the  stronger  for  his  pain;  his  long  conflict  helps  to  make  our 
calm.  For  very  shame,  we  dare  not  skulk  nor  loiter  now;  and 
whither  Stevenson  has  gone,  there  do  we  in  our  poor,  halting 
fashion  seek  the  way. 


POSTLUDE 


WHEN    FROM    THE    VISTA    OF    THE    BOOK    I     SHRINK, 

FROM    LAUDED    PENS    THAT    EARN    IGNOBLE    WAGE 

BEGETTING    NOTHING    JOYOUS,     NOTHING    SAGE, 

NOR    KEEP    WITH    SHAKESPEARE' S    USE    ONE    GOLDEN     LINK; 

WHEN    HEAVILY    MY    SANGUINE    SPIRITS    SINK 

TO     READ    TOO     PLAIN    ON    EACH    IMPOSTOR    PAGE 

ONLY    OF    KINGS    THE    BROKEN    LINEAGE, 

WELL    FOR    MY    PEACE    IF    THEN     ON    THEE    I    THINK, 

LOUIS,     OUR     PRIEST    OF    LETTERS    AND    OUR     KNIGHT 

WITH     WHOSE    FAMILIAR    BALDRIC     HOPE     IS    GIRT, 

FROM     WHOSE    YOUNG    HANDS    SHE    BEARS    THE    GRAIL   AWAY: 

ALL    GLAD,     ALL    GREAt!    TRUER    BECAUSE    THOU    WERT 

I    AM    AND    MUST    BE,     AND    IN    THY    KNOWN     LIGHT 

GO     DOWN    TO     DUST,     CONTENT    WITH    THIS    MY    DAY. 

Stcut  luna  pcrfecta  in  aeternum  et  testis  in  coelo  fiOelie. 


$1)     $y 


Two  hundred   and  fifty  copies   of  this  book  have  been  printed 
during  May  1895  at  the  Heintzemann  Press  Boston 
46 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 


AN  INITIAL  FINE  OF  25  CENTS 

WrLL  BE  ASSESSED  FOR  FAILURE  TO  RETURN 
THIS  BOOK  ON  THE  DATE  DUE.  THE  PENALTY 
WILL  INCREASE  TO  50  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH 
DAY  AND  TO  $1.00  ON  THE  SEVENTH  DAY 
OVERDUE. 


Sep'52Al: 


MAY  19  19// 6  6 


44-i4 


(USSf 


CIRCULAUON  DEPf 


LD  21-: 


M14GG17 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  UBRARY 


>  ; 


